Understanding typologies of feedback environment perceptions: A latent profile investigation

Research on supervisor feedback environment perceptions—contextual aspects of day-to-day feedback relationships—has established important relations between such perceptions and employee motivation, well-being, and performance. However, this line of work has two key limitations. First, all work has adopted a variable-centered approach, assessing how a composite score of seven feedback environment facets (e.g., feedback quality, feedback delivery, favorable feedback, feedback credibility, unfavorable feedback, source availability, promotion of feedback seeking) relates to outcomes. This assumes that employees have similar perceptions across all facets, ignoring the possibility that different profiles, or constellations, of supervisor feedback environment perceptions may exist. Second, antecedents of the feedback environment have been understudied, leaving many questions about how supervisor feedback environment perceptions develop. We seek to address these limitations by adopting a person-centered research approach in order to (a) identify profiles of feedback environment perceptions, (b) link these profiles to antecedents grounded in social exchange theory (SET), and (c) test the relations of these profiles with important feedback environment criteria. Results across two studies revealed three distinct profiles of feedback environment perceptions, each of which were differentiated by antecedents tied to SET, and uniquely related to outcomes tied to employee well-being, motivation, and supervisor-rated performance. These results expand upon previous work by exploring how perceptions of the supervisor feedback environment develop and operate more fully.