Understanding Heterogeneity in the Performance Feedback – Organizational Responsiveness Relationship: A Meta-Analysis

Organizational performance feedback theory (PFT), which is derived from the Behavioral Theory of the Firm, has emerged as a key perspective guiding studies investigating how performance relative to aspiration levels (i.e., performance feedback) influences organizational responsiveness. While the PFT literature refers to a core prediction - performance below aspirations induces more responsiveness than performance above aspirations does - empirical evidence reveals considerable conflicting findings. In line with contested issues in the current PFT literature, we propose a series of research questions and more refined predictions, which we elated to specific dimensions of performance feedback (valence, type of aspiration level and performance indicator), type of responsiveness (search versus change), and organizational characteristics (age, form of ownership, and industry). We test these refinements with various meta-analytic approaches, based on 263 effect sizes extracted from 156 studies. Our results demonstrate that the way in which performance feedback influences organizational responsiveness is sensitive to the factors we based our predictions on, with meta-analyzed effect sizes ranging from -0.106 to 0.055. Our findings help to systematically distinguish patterns in the heterogeneity associated with the performance feedback-responsiveness relationship. These results support our contention that more refined explanations, measures, and models of organizational performance feedback are needed.