Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1999

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Major Professor

Joyce E. A. Russell

Committee Members

R. Thomas Ladd, Eric Sundstrom, Dudley Dewhirst

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to gain a better understanding of how individuals process the information received in a multi-rater feedback format. The goal orientation and work environment needs of the feedback recipients were assessed in order to determine whether they were more likely to attend to the ratings from one source (i.e.,manager, peers, direct reports) than another.Using Ashford and Cummings' (1983) model of the feedback-seeking process asa point of departure, it was hypothesized that the needs of the feedback recipients would influence which aspects of the feedback report they would mentally process. Previousresearch demonstrated that performance goal-oriented individuals value external rewards more than individuals with a learning goal orientation (Pintrich & Garcia, 1991). Thus,individuals with a performance goal orientation were predicted to attend more to the feedback received from their manager due to the greater access to external rewards possessed by managers. Hence, the recall of information received from the manager was expected to be greater than that of other feedback sources due to the perception that the manager could better meet the needs of the feedback recipient.Subjects were 210 employees who had recently participated in a multi-rater feedback program as part of a larger organizational change initiative at a southeastern public utility. Questionnaires were completed and each participant was interviewed by the researcher approximately two months after receiving his or her multi-rater feedbackreport.VIThe results indicated that goal orientation and an individual's work environment needs did not generally result in a differential processing of information from one feedback source relative to another as measured by recall. Interestingly, however,individuals with a low learning dominant goal orientation were generally more familiar with their feedback in a global sense than individuals with a high learning dominant goal orientation. Also interesting was the finding that feedback recipients differentiate between the usefulness of the information received from a particular source depending on the purpose for the information. For example, when asked which source provided the most useful information about their strengths, a majority of individuals chose peers or direct reports. The opposite was found when individuals were asked to identify the source that provided them with the most useful information about their developmental needs. Upon further exploration of this phenomenon, it was discovered that those employees who chose peers or direct reports as providing the most useful information about their developmental needs also indicated wanting a significantly greater amount of recognition from their manager than they were currently experiencing.Although the relationship between learning goal orientation and the ability to recall feedback on the multi-rater feedback report was found to be negative, individuals with a higher learning goal orientation were more likely to actively participate in a developmental activity based on the information received in the feedback report. Similar Results were found for individuals with a higher need for professional development.These findings indicated that, although high learning-oriented individuals were less likely to process all of the information presented in the report, they may be more likely toVllactually choose a particular dimension for development and follow through with the developmental activity.In summary, an individual's goal orientation did not engender a differential processing of information from one feedback source more than another source as predicted. Surprisingly, individuals with a low learning goal orientation were generally more familiar with their feedback in a global sense than individuals with a high learning goal orientation; however, high learning goal-oriented individuals were more likely to participate in developmental activities based on the feedback that they received.

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