Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Moore School of Business

Sub-Department

Business Administration

First Advisor

Andrew Newman

Abstract

Advances in technology have made it possible for employers to provide performance feedback to employees on a more frequent basis. This study investigates how different feedback frequencies can alter employees’ perceptions of time and subsequently how these altered perceptions influence employee productivity. I predict and find that feedback frequency alters the way employees break up or segment their work time—a process that I refer to as feedback-driven time segmenting. Ultimately I find that this process causes feedback frequency to have opposing effects on employee productivity. Specifically employees who receive more frequent feedback find fewer task efficiencies than employees who receive less frequent feedback. This finding represents an unintended cost of increasing feedback frequency—it can lead employees to be less likely to discover new and better ways of completing their work. However, I also find that employees who receive more frequent feedback work harder, if less efficiently, than employees who receive less frequent feedback. By examining both how hard employees work and how smart (i.e., efficiently) they work my study provides enhanced insight into the costs and benefits of increasing feedback frequency. As such, it helps managerial accountants fulfill one of their primary roles, understanding how performance information influences employee behavior.

Rights

© 2018, Nate Waddoups

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