Feedback and Administrative Behavior in the Public Sector

Feedback, or telling employees how well they are performing, is an essential element for effective organizational functioning. Feedback plays a determinative role in how employees perceive their work environment and it affects their perception of their employer's evaluation and reward system. Feedback affects both employee motivation and performance. Given feedback's positive effect upon so many other aspects of employee behavior, it probably has a positive effect on professionalism as well. Unfortunately, this intuitively appealing relationship has not been demonstrated in existing research. The positive relationship between feedback and other aspects of organizational behavior has been clearly demonstrated. Adequate feedback has positive impacts on motivation in general,' effort,2 goal setting,3 performance adjustment and improvement,4 and goal attainment.5 Adequacy of feedback has also been linked with career satisfaction6 and to reduced turnover.7 Employees desire and actively seek feedback about their performance from their supervisor, co-workers, and the work itself.8 These behaviors occur because employees seek to reduce uncertainty about the adequacy or acceptability of their performance at work. These behaviors also reflect a desire to understand contingencies at work such as those between effort and performance and between performance and rewards.9 Feedback may occur through formal evaluations but more often occurs informally in day-to-day communications. Unfortunately, the importance of adequate feedback often is overlooked and the practice of giving feedback is taken for granted by many supervisors, co-workers, and clients or recipients of organizational services. A low adequacy of feedback in the work situation is one where a supervisor rarely, if ever, tells employees how well they are performing. Also, this situation occurs when employees receive only negative feedback. Employees in this situation might receive feedback only when they do not meet supervisory expectations. To make matters worse, they may have little prior knowledge of these expectations. On the other hand, when