An objective review of the effectiveness and essential characteristics of performance feedback in organizational settings (1985-1998)

Performance feedback has been used Successfully to increase performance in a variety of organizational settings for over 20 years. The main objective of the present review was to update the feedback literature review conducted by Balcazar, Hopkins, and Suarez in 1985. The current review identified 68 applications of feedback from 43 studies in applied organizational settings. Each application was categorized by: feedback effectiveness, combinations of other interventions with feedback, and essential characteristics of feedback. The results of our review Support some findings of the previous review: (a) feedback does not uniformly improve performance, and (b) the addition of other procedures tends to improve the consistency of feedback effects. Our review also suggests that more useful and practical information would come from assessing the functional mechanisms of feedback. The implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.