Considerations in Feedback Delivery: The Role of Accuracy and Type of Evaluation

Performance feedback remains a commonly implemented and successful intervention within organizational behavior management, but a comprehensive understanding of the components that influence the effectiveness of feedback tends to be lacking. The present study sought to contribute by analyzing the variables of accuracy (contingent on or independent of performance) and evaluation type (supportive or critical judgments) on performance using a simulated work environment. A total of 75 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 experimental conditions: (a) contingent and supportive feedback, (b) contingent and critical feedback, (c) independent and supportive feedback, or (d) independent and critical feedback. Outcomes suggested that contingent feedback improved performance relative to independent feedback, however, no differences were found between supportive and critical types of feedback. The need for additional research into the functional and formal elements of effective feedback is also discussed.     

The Effects of a Combined Goal Setting,Feedback and Incentive Intervention on Job Performance in a Manufacturing Environment

Abstract

Baked anodes are used in finished aluminum production. Employees of a large multinational aluminum smelter were responsible for the production of more than 3500 baked anodes per week. During a 74 week long baseline (A) condition, production of unusable anodes exceeded 300 per week or 8.6 percent of their nominal 3500 anode production requirement. A problem analysis suggested that this high rate of defective anodes might have been due to weak antecedents, inefficient work procedures and weak performance contingencies. An intervention package that included a combination of goal setting, performance feedback, and tangible rewards was designed to strengthen antecedents and consequences of job performance. A performance feedback system was introduced with and remained constant across the three types of performance contingent rewards and three successively higher goal levels. The three reward and goal combinations were introduced to “strengthen” antecedents and performance contingencies within an A-B1-B2-B3-A with reversal to baseline conditions design. Anode reject rates were lower (better performance) during the three intervention phases compared to both the pre- and post-intervention baseline phase data. A dramatic performance improvement (lowered rate of rejects) was observed during the B3 phase that included the highest performance goal. These data demonstrate that a treatment combination of specific goal setting, feedback and tangible rewards can “strengthen” antecedents and performance contingencies resulting in improved objective performance in a manufacturing environment.     

Improving Closing Task Completion in a Drugstore

A within-subject ABAB reversal design was utilized to investigate the effects of graphic feedback and goal setting on employee closing task completion. Goal setting was contingent upon baseline performance and graphic feedback was posted weekly. It was found that goal setting and graphic feedback improved employee closing task completion.     

Weekly Feedback vs. Daily Feedback

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted in a retail setting to (a) assess the effectiveness of a multi-component performance management intervention and (b) compare the effectiveness of weekly and daily feedback. During the first experiment, a multiple baseline design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of task clarification, goal setting, access to preferred items contingent upon goal attainment, and weekly graphic feedback on the completion of routine maintenance tasks in a framing and art store. During phase 1 of the second experiment, an AB design was used to replicate the effects of this intervention on similar tasks in a new store location with the same participants. During phase 2 of the second experiment, a multiple baseline design was used to assess the effectiveness of the intervention when daily feedback replaced weekly feedback. Results indicate that the multi-component intervention was effective in both experiments, and that daily feedback may have enhanced the effectiveness of the intervention.     

Effects of Accurate and Inaccurate Feedback on Work Performance: The Role of the Awareness of Inaccuracy

ABSTRACT

This study compared the effects of accurate (i.e., contingent) and inaccurate (i.e., non-contingent) feedback on work performance under two different work conditions. Under one work condition, participants could clearly see the outcome of their performance (i.e., visible condition). Under the other condition, they could not clearly see the outcome of their performance (i.e., non-visible condition). One hundred and twenty participants were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions (i.e., accurate/visible, inaccurate/visible, accurate/non-visible, and inaccurate/non-visible) and asked to perform a simulated work task. The results indicated that inaccurate feedback was as effective as accurate feedback under the non-visible condition, but inaccurate feedback was less effective than accurate feedback under the visible condition.     

An Analysis of the Effects of Feedback and Reinforcement on Machine-Paced Production

Most of the behavior management literature has focused on problems other than those involved in machine-paced production. The r e ported research employed performance feedback and social approval to improve worker productivity associated with a machine-paced task. Further analyses indicated that the increased productivity was a result of increases in the time that operators had the machinery running rather than increases in machine operation rates. It is suggested that productivity rates in machine paced operations, which are t y p i d y considered dependent on the machinery, can frequently be improved by identifying the behavioral components within those processes and controlling them directly with behavior management methods. Classes of behaviors which are often associated with machine-paced production and which might he profitably improved with behavior management methods are discussed.     

经济下行、信用风险反馈和政府隐性救助

基于资产负债表分析经济下行背景下企业部门、银行和政府间信用风险传导,利用或有权益资产负债表中显性负债和隐性担保项目构建信用风险反馈模型分析银行部门和政府间信用风险反馈,最后结合我国政府对银行救助特点,分析政府对银行的隐性救助方式与救助成本之间的关系.实证结果表明货币供应量和汇率波动对上市企业部门、银行和政府间风险传导影响显著,风险通过隐性担保在银行部门和政府之间反馈了恶化两部门的信用风险,并且监管宽容会增加政府救助成本.建议政府调控货币供应量、控制汇率波动性、降低监管宽容程度、建立动态系统性风险损失准备金.     

Effects of Grouped and Individual Feedback and Feinforcement on Retail Employee Performances

Using a modified withdrawal design, the effeciveness of grouped feedback, individual feedback, and reinforcement plus individual feedback were assessed on cashier precision, punctuality, and money check-out proficiency of 15 part-time employees in a retail drugstore. Publicly posted performance charts were used during all conditions to inform employees of their grouped or individual daily discrepancies between cash register cumulative totals and the actual amount accounted for, the tardiness figures, and the manner in which all daily money was checked into the safe. The final intervention also included contingent reinforcement in the form of movie tickets, soft drinks, and candy bars for performances at or above criterion levels. The use of individual feedback alone and reinforcement with individual feedback increased efficiency substantially in all three areas; whereas, grouped feedback alone did not effectively increase efficiency.     

The Structured Meeting System

The effectiveness of a structured meeting system, incorporating weekly meetings, deadlines and task monitoring was evaluated with four middle managers. The manager/experimenter introduced the system according to a multiple-baseline across-subjects design, and each supervisee improved markedly during intervention on measures of timeliness and productivity. A behavioral analysis suggested that the meeting system changed both the manager's and the supervisees' contingencies, and made the planned consequence of manager approval more contingent on desired supervisee behavior.     

A Review of Public Posting of Performance Feedback in Work Settings

Public posting of employee performance data has been utilized in many work settings to affect a variety of work-related behaviors. Business applications of performance posting, including studies using goal setting and intangible incentives in combination with the performance posting interventions are reviewed. The review indicates that performance posting is an effective feedback intervention for improving employee performance. It was also found that many possible confounds such as training, instructions, self-recording, threats of dismtssal, and increases in social/coworker interaction may contribute to the overall positive effects of public posting on employee performance.     

Behavior Management in a Factory Setting

A multiple-baseline design in which two intervention components of feedback and feedback-plus-praise was applied across 7 departments of a medium-sized furniture manufacturing plant. Daily average worker efficiency was collected for at least 8 weeks in each target department prior to introduction of the first component. This was introuduced in a temporally-staggered fashion across departments, entailed verbal repoll of daily efficiencies to each operative worker, and the visual individual display of this information on chart that were conspicuously posted in the work area. This condition, designated feedback-only, lasted from 8-35 wk. The second component continued with feedback and, in addition, supervisors were coached to contact and praise employees whose efficiencies exceeded predetermined levels or that improved in that direction. This feedback-plus-praise condition was introduced in a temporally-staggered sequence in four departments and lasted from 27 to over 100 weeks. Manipulation checks for graphing and praise were included and a benefits-analysis was conducted. Results were that of 7 relatively independent tests of feedback-only, fully 5 of these resulted in marked and reliable work increases and, of the other 2, one approached significance. Two of 4 tests of the praise component proved reliable and the other two reflected increases in the same direction. Manipulation checks yielded support that feedback was "registered" by all, that praise was given, but not whether the latter was dispensed differentially across project phases. Benefits analyses showed a program-related increase in productivity equivalent to 800-1050 man hours.     

The Effects of Individual Monetary Incentives With and Without Feedback

Abstract

This study examined the effects of an individual monetary incentive system with and without feedback to determine if feedback would supplement the effects of incentives. Participants were seven college students who performed a computerized task called SYNWORK. SYNWORK presented four sub-tasks concurrently: memory, arithmetic, visual monitoring and auditory monitoring. Participants earned points for correct responses. The dependent variable was the number of points earned. An ABAC design was used with A = individual monetary incentives without feedback, B = individual monetary incentives with feedback, and C = hourly pay with feedback. Sessions were 90 minutes, and there were 5 to 10 sessions per phase. The point scores of six of the seven participants increased when feedback was added to the incentive system but stabilized or continued to increase when feedback was removed. The feedback intervention was staggered in time across participants, and performance increased when feedback was added, hence the data suggest that feedback enhanced the effects of the incentives. One possible reason for the reversal failure is that feedback evoked higher levels of performance that were then maintained by the additional incentives. Because performance did not reverse, however, the results must be viewed cautiously.     

Product Differentiation,Multiproduct Firms,and Estimating the Impact of Trade Liberalization on Productivity

This paper studies whether removing barriers to trade induces efficiency gains for producers. Like almost all empirical work which relies on a production function to recover productivity measures, I do not observe physical output at the firm level. Therefore, it is imperative to control for unobserved prices and demand shocks. I develop an empirical model that combines a demand system with a production function to generate estimates of productivity. I rely on my framework to identify the productivity effects from reduced trade protection in the Belgian textile market. This trade liberalization provides me with observed demand shifters that are used to separate out the associated price, scale, and productivity effects. Using a matched plant–product level data set and detailed quota data, I find that correcting for unobserved prices leads to substantially lower productivity gains. More specifically, abolishing all quota protections increases firm‐level productivity by only 2 percent as opposed to 8 percent when relying on standard measures of productivity. My results beg for a serious reevaluation of a long list of empirical studies that document productivity responses to major industry shocks and, in particular, to opening up to trade. My findings imply the need to study the impact of changes in the operating environment on productivity together with market power and prices in one integrated framework. The suggested method and identification strategy are quite general and can be applied whenever it is important to distinguish between revenue productivity and physical productivity.     

Combining Workstation Design and Performance Management to Increase Ergonomically Correct Computer Typing Postures

The effects of workstation changes and a performance management (PM) package on seven typing postures were examined for seven office workers. Workstation adjustments were implemented first. Two participants increased five safe postures by 50% or more. The effects of a PM package on postures that did not improve by 50% were then examined using a multiple baseline design across participants. The PM package included information, feedback, and praise. Composite percent safe scores for postures targeted in the PM package increased for all seven participants, with increases ranging from 54% to 80%. Results suggest that it is beneficial to combine ergonomic design and performance management in office ergonomic programs.     

A Component Analysis of the Impact of Evaluative and Objective Feedback on Performance

Despite the frequency with which performance feedback interventions are used in organizational behavior management, component analyses of such feedback are rare. It has been suggested that evaluation of performance and objective details about performance are two necessary components for performance feedback. The present study was designed to help clarify which components are required for maximal effectiveness by comparing four conditions: (a) combined evaluative and objective feedback, (b) evaluative feedback alone, (c) objective feedback alone, and (d) no feedback. A total of 105 undergraduate students were recruited to work on a simulated bank check processing task while being exposed to one of the four feedback conditions. The number of checks correctly processed served as the dependent variable. Results suggest that a combination of objective and evaluative feedback is necessary for maximal performance.     

Cellular Bucket Brigades on U‐Lines with Discrete Work Stations

It is challenging to maximize and maintain productivity of a U‐line with discrete stations under the impact of variability. This is because maximizing productivity requires assigning workers to suitable tasks and maintaining productivity requires sufficient flexibility in task assignment to absorb the impact of variability. To achieve this goal, we propose an operating protocol to coordinate workers on the U‐line. Under the protocol the system can be configured such that its productivity is maximized. Workers are allowed to dynamically share work so that the system can effectively absorb the impact of variability. Analysis based on a deterministic model shows that the system always converges to a fixed point or a period‐2 orbit. We identify a sufficient condition for the system to converge to the fixed point. Increasing the number of stations improves productivity only under certain circumstances. The improvement is most significant when the number of stations in each stage increases from one to two, but further dividing the U‐line into more stations has diminishing return. Simulations based on random work velocities suggest that our approach significantly outperforms an optimized, static work allocation policy if variability in velocity is large.     

A Preliminary Laboratory Evaluation: Effects of Consequence Quality and Ratio-Schedule Arrangements on Staff Performance

ABSTRACT

Supplementary, contingent pay arrangements can result in improved employee productivity and increased job satisfaction. We examined the effects of four stimulus delivery arrangements on performance in a computer-based task in a simulated work context. Three participants entered hypothetical client data onto a Microsoft Excel® invoice and earned gift-cards for task completion according to the following conditions: (a) fixed-ratio/high-preference stimuli (FR/HiP), (b) variable-ratio/high-preference stimuli (VR/HiP), (c) fixed-ratio/varied stimuli (FR/Var), and (d) variable-ratio/varied stimuli (VR/Var). For two of three participants varied reinforcers produced similar levels of responding to high-preference stimuli regardless of schedule type, whereas varied reinforcers did not support responding for the third participant. All participants preferred working under conditions of access to high-preference reinforcers. Results are discussed in light of creating efficient performance improvement plans in organizational settings.     

Feedback quality and performance in organisations

The provision of feedback is fundamental for promoting employee performance in modern organisations; however, little is known about how the quality of feedback affects performance. We report an experiment where subjects perform a real-effort task repeatedly in a flat-wage environment which varies the quality of feedback across treatments. In the baseline treatment, subjects receive no feedback about their rank in their group. In the two main treatments, feedback quality varies in that subjects know (“High-Quality Feedback”) or do not know (“Low-Quality Feedback”) their exact rank in their group. We show that the quality of feedback is an important driver of productivity. Average performance is significantly higher for high-quality feedback than for low-quality or no feedback, where no significant overall performance differences are observed. Our results have significant implications for designing and implementing cost-effective policies within organisations.     

Information systems outsourcing projects as a double moral hazard problem

In the past two decades many organizations have turned to other organizations to satisfy their information systems needs. Information systems outsourcing arrangements cover the spectrum from agreements involving the delivery of all information services to those providing specific services such as systems development, communications management, desktop computing provision and maintenance, and so on.In this paper we model information systems outsourcing arrangements as a non-cooperative game with two players: a company and an outsourcing vendor. The game between the two players has an inherent double moral hazard problem as the success of the information system outsourcing project depends on the actions of both players, which are costly for them and are not directly contractible. Both parties make their decisions taking into account the effects that these decisions have on the other player's actions. In our analysis, we compare the solution obtained without a moral hazard problem (the first-best solution) to the one obtained under a double moral hazard setting (the second-best solution). We demonstrate some results based on the assumption that increases in the productivity of the vendor lead to increases in the productivity of the company. Further we establish that outsourcing contracts should provide no separate payment for failure to the outsourcing vendor although effectively many of them do. We also provide a sharing rule for providing appropriate incentives for the vendor and examine the dynamics associated with this sharing rule. Finally, we further provide for the characterization of response functions and the ensuing Nash solution including the optimal outsourcing fee. This allows for the nuanced consideration of the degree of interaction between the effort of one party and the productivity of the effort of the other party. This particular interaction has not been explored formally in the extant research literature.     

The Impact of Trade on Intra‐Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity

This paper develops a dynamic industry model with heterogeneous firms to analyze the intra‐industry effects of international trade. The model shows how the exposure to trade will induce only the more productive firms to enter the export market (while some less productive firms continue to produce only for the domestic market) and will simultaneously force the least productive firms to exit. It then shows how further increases in the industry's exposure to trade lead to additional inter‐firm reallocations towards more productive firms. The paper also shows how the aggregate industry productivity growth generated by the reallocations contributes to a welfare gain, thus highlighting a benefit from trade that has not been examined theoretically before. The paper adapts Hopenhayn's (1992a) dynamic industry model to monopolistic competition in a general equilibrium setting. In so doing, the paper provides an extension of Krugman's (1980) trade model that incorporates firm level productivity differences. Firms with different productivity levels coexist in an industry because each firm faces initial uncertainty concerning its productivity before making an irreversible investment to enter the industry. Entry into the export market is also costly, but the firm's decision to export occurs after it gains knowledge of its productivity.