Getting Ratees to Accept Performance Feedback: A Relational Approach.

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand the association between ratees' relational justice perceptions and their feedback acceptance, both directly and through leader-member exchange (LMX). The paper also examines the moderated mediation effect of supervisory trust. The paper presents the findings of two studies. Study 1 utilized two data sets collected through an online survey from 280 part-time students working full-time (Sample 1) and 292 working professionals (Sample 2) in Pakistan. Study 2 utilized data collected from N = 167 students recruited for a scenario-based experiment that manipulated whether a manager was fair or unfair. Results revealed that relational justice positively predicted feedback acceptance in Studies 1 and 2. LMX positively mediated the above-mentioned relationship in both studies. As expected, supervisory trust negatively moderated the relational justice-feedback acceptance relationship in Study 2. The present study contributes to performance management theory and practice by illuminating that raters can stimulate performance partnership by employing a relational justice approach that increases the likelihood that employees accept performance feedback.