Do Managers Give Relative Performance Feedback? The Effect of Workload and Feedback Valence

Managers often have difficulties balancing the provision of informal feedback to employees with other responsibilities. This is problematic because managers may become more unfair in the feedback they provide to employees when workload increases, especially when feedback is negative. Psychology research suggests that temporal performance feedback is perceived as more interpersonally fair than relative performance feedback. In a 2 × 4 between-subjects experiment, I therefore examine whether and to what extent managers prefer temporal vs. relative performance feedback and how this depends on managers’ workload and feedback valence. I predict and find that managers have a strong preference for temporal performance feedback, which is weaker when managers’ workload increases and when feedback is negative because of limited cognitive resources. Specifically, giving feedback to low performers under high workload also harms performance on other tasks. My results highlight the importance of studying managerial discretion in the provision of feedback because managers have a desire to give performance feedback that aligns with preferences to act fairly, which may not always be facilitated by managers’ working environment.