The Presence of a Feedback-Seeking Role Model in Promoting Employee Feedback Seeking

Despite an increasing number of studies that show a positive relationship between the supportiveness of a feedback source and feedback seeking, little is known about the impact of supervisors' demonstration of feedback-seeking behavior in promoting employees seeking feedback from them. In addition, although previous studies have shown that feedback seeking is an interactive process and is emotionally charged, to our knowledge, no studies have investigated the role that the source's emotional regulation played in the feedback-seeker's seeking frequency. The present article developed a moderated mediation model to fill this void and tested it with data from a sample of 215 supervisor-subordinate dyads from China. We hypothesized and found that supervisors' feedback-seeking inquiries from subordinates were positively related to subordinates' feedback-seeking behaviors from supervisors, mediated by the perceived value and cost of the feedback seeking. The results also supported the moderating roles of supervi...