Abstract

The world today is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century.Times are changing, while circumstances are changing, and so are requirements.The increasingly dynamic, complex, ambiguous and diversified competitive environment undoubtedly has brought so many challenges for their enterprises to improve their performance, gain competitive advantages, and achieve strategic goals. Under such circumstances, the employees, as the most basic organizational unit, seem to have become the most important asset and the most fundamental power source of the enterprise. This requires that enterprises should not only help employees to fulfill their roles and complete their tasks, but also encourage employees to actively participate in extra-role activities, which can finally promote the performance of the enterprises in the long run. Therefore, how to motivate employees to take in-role tasks and participate in extra-role activities to improve the organizational performance has gradually become an important issue in current management practice.

The “Personnel” in an organization can be divided into two categories:the supervisor and the subordinate. The research on the relationship between supervisors and their subordinates, especially the influence of the supervisors on their subordinates, has always been a hot topic in academic circles. As a significant tool for the supervisors to intervene and influence their subordinates’performances, supervisor feedback has gradually become a new academic research hotspot. Feedback from supervisors can be further divided into two types: positive feedback and negative feedback. Supervisor positive feedback emphasizes that the supervisors treat their subordinates in a positive way,while negative feedback means that the supervisors treat their subordinates in a negative way. The existing study have confirmed that the subordinates are more willing to accept the positive feedback from their supervisors than negative one. However, in terms of the specific influence of the positive feedback and negative feedback from the supervisors on the performance of subordinates, the conclusions of existing studies are inconsistent. The deep-seated reasons behind it is worth exploring.

As an important theory to explain the influence of the supervisor’s behavior on their subordinates, Regulatory Focus Theory emphasizes that supervisors can exert influence on subordinates by arousing different situational regulatory focus of subordinates, and points out that the individual characteristics of subordinates can play an important moderating role in these processes. Therefore, under the background of the practice and theory, this study attempts to construct and verify how supervisor feedback affects their subordinate performance according to Regulatory Focus Theory. Specifically, it involves the direct effect of positive feedback and negative feedback from the supervisors on in-role performance and extra-role performance of subordinates, the intermediary mechanism and the boundary conditions. To solve these research problems mentioned above,the present study firstly constructs a theoretical model to discuss the influence of supervisor feedback on subordinate performance based on the related research contents and results of supervisor feedback and Regulatory Focus Theory. Then, the present study deeply investigates the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of supervisor feedback on subordinate performance,which includes the direct effect of supervisor positive feedback and negative feedback on the subordinate’s， in-role and extra-role performance, the moderating role of subordinates’ chronic regulatory focus, the mediating role of subordinates’situational regulatory focus, and the moderating role of the subordinate’s feedback orientation.

In the present study, the data is collected via a questionnaire survey in a convenient sampling way. The final sample of the present study was obtained from two large-scale manufacturing enterprises in two prefecture-level cities in certain province of eastern region in our country. The sample data was collected from the two sources， i. e. the supervisor and the subordinate, which have gone through three stages. In the first stage, the subordinates are required to evaluate their perceptions of the positive and negative feedback from their direct supervisors, as well as their own chronic regulatory focus. In the second stage, the subordinates were asked to finish the measurements of their feedback orientation and situational regulatory focus. In the third stage, the supervisors are invited to evaluate the in-role and extra-role performances of their immediate subordinates. After discarding the invalid data, we ultimately retain 373 samples.Using SPSS 22.0 and Mplus 7.2 statistical analysis software to analyze the data,this study verifies that:

Supervisor positive feedback has significant positive influences on subordinate in-role and extra-role performance. Supervisor negative feedback has significant positive impact on subordinate in-role performance, and significant negative influence on subordinate extra-role performance. The chronic regulatory focus of the subordinates can positively moderate the influence of supervisor positive feedback on his/her in-role and extra-role performances, but not moderate the influence of supervisor negative feedback on his/her performances. Besides,the promotive situational regulatory focus of the subordinates can mediate the influences of supervisor positive feedback on his/her in-role and extra-role performances, while preventive situational regulatory focus of the subordinates can only mediate the influence of supervisor negative feedback on his/her in-role performances. In addition, the feedback orientation of the subordinates can not only moderate the influence of supervisor positive feedback on his/her promotive situational regulatory focus, but also can moderate the influence of supervisor negative feedback on his/her preventive situational regulatory focus.

The theoretical contributions of this study are shown below: First, this study explores the different effects of positive feedback and negative feedback from the supervisor on the in-role and extra-role performances of their subordinates, which can provide a possible research perspective to figure out the academic disputes about the influence of supervisor feedback on their subordinate’s performance.Second, this study reveals the internal influencing process of supervisor positive and negative feedback on their subordinate’s performance, and unlocks the “black box” in the relationship between supervisor feedback and their subordinate’s performance, which enriches the relevant academic research on the mechanism of the effect of supervisor feedback on their subordinates. Third, from the perspective of the individual differences of the subordinates, this study defines the extension of the influence of supervisor feedback on their subordinates, and clearly shows the external boundary conditions of the influences of positive and negative feedback from the supervisor on their subordinate situational regulatory focus, in-role performance and extra-role performance. Finally, these conclusions further verify the applicability of Regulatory Focus Theory in Chinese context, which can expand the research scope and the depth of Regulatory Focus Theory.

This study also has the following implications for management practice:First, the managers should be fully aware of the importance of feedback. They should not only actively transfer information to subordinates through feedback,but also respond to the subordinates’ feedback willingness in a timely manner.Then, we suggest the supervisor should provide feedback to subordinates in a positive way, which means that they should pay attention to the construction,immediacy and frequency of the feedback. Besides, the managers should keep their eyes on their subordinates’ situational regulatory focus, and guide their subordinates to form promotive regulatory focus at work as much as possible by creating a friendly atmosphere, and providing them with incentive professional training. Finally, the managers should provide personalized feedback based on the personality of their subordinates, and give priority to those candidates with chronic promotive regulatory focus or high level of feedback orientation in the daily selection and employment process.

Key words: supervisor positive feedback; supervisor negative feedback; in role performance; extra-role performance; situational regulatory focus; chronic regulatory focus; feedback orientation