Abstract

Informal feedback giving behavior has been largely ignored in the management science literature despite the important role it plays in improving individual and organizational performance. This two-part study was designed to elucidate the construct of informal feedback giving behavior and to develop a scale to measure the behavior. A model of informal feedback giving, originally developed by Larson (1984), was extended with the addition of Dweck's (2000) implicit theories of human abilities to predict informal feedback giving by supervisors. Employee tenure and supervisor-employee task dependence were hypothesized to moderate the relationship between the supervisors' implicit theory and their informal feedback giving. The results of the scale development and validation revealed that there are four factors underlying feedback giving. These factors include two dimensions of the feedback valence (positive and negative) and two communication methods (verbal and non-verbal) that were combined into four subscales (positive verbal, positive non-verbal, negative verbal and negative non-verbal). These factors were extracted in both the employee and the supervisor samples, suggesting a robust structure. The extension of Larson's model produced mixed results and the original hypotheses were not clearly supported. Implicit theories of human abilities predicted certain types of informal feedback giving although there was limited concordance between the employee and the supervisor reports. The moderators, employee tenure and task dependence, did have an effect on the relationship between the supervisors' implicit theory and their tendency to provide specific types of feedback. The implications of these findings were discussed with an emphasis on the construct of informal feedback giving and the effects of implicit theories on the behavior.