In demand-driven feedback systems, employees receive performance feedback only upon request, and the feedback employees receive from other employees is commonly shared with the supervisor. In this study, I investigate which employees choose to provide their supervisor with evaluation-relevant information about themselves by requesting feedback, and how this information is used by supervisors in their subjective evaluations of employees. I predict that high performers are more likely to request feedback in a demand-driven feedback system, and that the feedback is informative for evaluations of performance while the feedback request is informative for evaluations of potential. Using data from a large European company, I find support for these predictions. My results suggest that demand-driven feedback systems can be used as an additional source of information for evaluation and resource allocation purposes. However, they may not be effective in supporting the performance development of most employees and low performers in particular when feedback is shared with evaluators.

This paper investigates the performance effects of narrative feedback. We build on cognitive self-regulation theory to predict how two important characteristics of narrative feedback (i.e., specificity and causal language use) influence self-regulation and thereby affect performance when used in feedback on strengths and weaknesses. We test our predictions using field data from a European e-commerce firm, and we find that higher specificity in feedback on strengths can positively affect performance, consistent with an increased likelihood of systematic exploration and effective self-regulation. In contrast, higher specificity can adversely affect performance when used in feedback on weaknesses. Furthermore, we find that higher causal language use in feedback on weaknesses can have positive performance effects, consistent with an improved self-regulation though increased understanding and sensemaking. In contrast, causal language use can also have adverse effects when used in feedback on strengths. In additional analyses, we show that narrative feedback effects depend on the gap between the employee’s and the firm’s performance standard and further show that narrative feedback characteristics can lead to improvement in the performance dimensions that are the focus of the feedback. In sum, our findings advance our understanding of whether and how narrative feedback can be valuable for employee development.

We investigate the effect of overproduction on employment- and safety-related organizational misconduct. We predict that overproduction puts employees under pressure, who may respond by “cutting corners” and increasing their workload, resulting in higher organizational misconduct. We further predict that this might lead to changes in social norms within the organization over time, resulting in an increase of future misconduct and a slippery slope, i.e., an increase of the average severity of future misconduct. Controlling for previous levels of misconduct, we find effects consistent with our predictions for both the prevalence and severity of future misconduct. We also find evidence for the presence of a slippery slope. In additional analyses, we show results for situations in which overproduction pressure may have a differential effect on social norms.