r Academy of Management Journal
2020, Vol. 63, No. 2, 584–612.
https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.1196

DOES NEGATIVE FEEDBACK BENEFIT (OR HARM)
RECIPIENT CREATIVITY? THE ROLE OF THE DIRECTION OF
FEEDBACK FLOW
YEUN JOON KIM
University of Cambridge
JUNHA KIM
Ohio State University
Negative feedback alerts recipients to a creativity–standard gap, and thus may offer an
opportunity to improve creativity. However, existing theories and empirical evidence
are contradictory, with the literature containing evidence of positive, negative, and null
relationships between negative feedback and recipient creativity. The goal of our research is twofold: first, to organize the contradictory theories under a comprehensive
theoretical framework, and, second, to resolve the inconsistency between negative
feedback and recipient creativity. Across two studies—a quasi-field experiment and a
laboratory experiment—we find that the direction of feedback flow determines the nature of the relationship between negative feedback and recipient creativity, via two
distinct mechanisms: task processes and meta-processes. Negative feedback increases
recipient creativity in the bottom-up feedback flow (from followers to supervisors), because it heightens the recipients’ focus on task processes, whereby the recipients focus
on the generation of better task strategies to close the creativity–standard gap. In contrast, in the top-down (from supervisors to followers) or lateral (between peers) feedback
flows, negative feedback heightens the recipients’ focus on meta-processes—a psychological state in which recipients feel threatened by negative feedback—and thus hinders
recipient creativity.

Employee “creativity”—defined as the production
of ideas that are both novel and useful (Amabile,
1983; Oldham & Cummings, 1996)—is a foundation
of organizational success (Anderson, Potočnik, &
Zhou, 2014). It allows organizations to continually
produce innovative products and keep them competitive in the market. Accordingly, understanding
how to improve employee creativity has been a
longstanding preoccupation of management scholars
(e.g., George, 2007; Perry-Smith, 2006). Since creativity involves a departure from the current ways of
thinking and behaving, employees often attempt to

provide other organizational members with negative
feedback to create dissatisfaction with the status quo
or the current levels of creativity (Ilgen, Fisher, &
Taylor, 1979). Negative feedback highlights problems
with current creativity, generating awareness of a gap
between current creativity and the standards. Once
the gap is recognized, employees may be motivated to
close the gap by improving their current creativity.
However, this argument has received limited empirical support. In fact, the evidence is completely
equivocal. Some scholars suggest that negative feedback has no direct effect on recipient creativity
(Fodor & Carver, 2000; George & Zhou, 2001), while
others suggest that negative feedback inhibits it
(Ilies & Judge, 2005; Van Dijk & Kluger, 2011; Zhou,
1998). We know of only three studies (Fang, Kim, &
Milliken, 2014; Ford & Gioia, 2000; Vuori & Huy,
2015) that provide evidence to support that negative
feedback might be positively associated with recipient creativity. Such perplexing empirical evidence
indicates that a basic question remains unanswered:
“How and why does negative feedback influence
creativity?”

We wish to thank our editor Jill Perry-Smith and three
anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive
feedback. We also thank Angelo DeNisi, Matthew Feinberg, Soo Min Toh, Jacob Hirsh, Geoffrey Leonardelli,
Andrew Hayes, and Sojin Park for their constructive
feedback. Yeun Joon Kim led the entire process of publishing this article. Junha Kim mainly contributed to literature review and Study 2. Correspondence concerning this
article should be addressed to Yeun Joon Kim, Judge
Business School, University of Cambridge. e-mail: y.kim@
jbs.cam.ac.uk.
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To answer this question, the present research
draws upon feedback intervention theory (Kluger &
DeNisi, 1996) to derive a parsimonious and coherent
theoretical account of the link between negative
feedback and creativity. Feedback intervention theory argues that negative feedback makes feedback
recipients aware of the gap between their current level
of creativity and the standards (the “creativity–
standard gap”) and that such awareness leads the recipients to engage in one of two functionally opposite
mechanisms in response to the negative feedback.
The first mechanism concerns “task processes,”
whereby recipients make constructive improvements
by engaging in the process of generating better task
strategies. They identify problems with their current
behavior in creativity tasks, design more useful and
novel strategies for their creativity tasks, and implement those strategies. The second mechanism
involves “meta-processes,” and refers to the psychological state in which recipients feel threatened
by negative feedback. Feedback recipients who engage in meta-processes feel that their ego, or selfconcept, is threatened by the negative feedback,
deterring them from experimentations and creative
attempts to improve their creativity. Despite its
usefulness in illustrating why negative feedback is
inconsistently related to recipient creativity, a notable limitation of feedback intervention theory is
that it does not elaborate on when negative feedback
recipients attend to either of the two processes.
The main objectives of this paper are to organize
the inconsistent theories and empirical findings
under the two mechanisms—task processes and
meta-processes—and to resolve the inconsistency
between negative feedback and recipient creativity
by introducing an important, but neglected, boundary condition: the direction of feedback flow. The
direction of these flows include bottom up (i.e., from
followers to supervisors), top down (i.e., from supervisors to followers), and lateral (i.e., from peers to
peers). We suggest that, in the bottom-up feedback
flow, negative feedback increases recipient creativity through task processes, whereas, in the top-down
and lateral feedback flows, negative feedback decreases recipient creativity through meta-processes.
In organizations, supervisors have asymmetric control over valuable organizational resources, such as
monetary rewards, promotions, training opportunities, and budgets and materials for completing tasks.
Followers do not have such control, and their supervisors determine their access to organizational resources. This power asymmetry often causes these two
parties to have completely different psychological

585

mindsets (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003;
Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Researchers have found that
power asymmetry leads the powerful (e.g., supervisors)
to be approach oriented (vs. inhibition oriented) toward
negative evaluations by the powerless (e.g., followers),
while the powerless become inhibited by negative
evaluations by the powerful (Keltner et al., 2003). In
addition, the powerful tend to maintain high levels of
task focus in the face of task-related criticisms and care
less about their social relationships with feedback
senders, whereas the powerless behave in an opposite way (Galinsky, Magee, Gruenfeld, Whitson,
& Liljenquist, 2008; Smith, Jostmann, Galinsky, &
Van Dijk, 2008; Steele, Spencer, & Aronson, 2002).
Based on these findings, we expect that negative
feedback increases recipient creativity via task
processes in the bottom-up feedback flow and decreases recipient creativity via meta-processes in
the top-down feedback flow.
The relationship between the feedback sender and
the recipient in the lateral feedback flow is qualitatively different from that in the bottom-up and topdown feedback flows. A peer relationship does not
involve differential social power. Instead, this relationship is characterized by rivalry, or competition,
given that organizational resources (e.g., promotions
and pay increases) are limited. Thus, employees
strive to stand out among their peers and become
increasingly concerned about the possibility of lagging behind them (Bandura, 1977; DeNisi, Randolph,
& Blencoe, 1983; Festinger, 1962). Peer competition
sometimes produces positive organizational outcomes (for a review, see Birkinshaw, 2001). However, regarding negative feedback between peers,
evidence has shown that the competitive and nonhierarchical nature of a peer relationship leads employees to interpret lateral negative feedback as an
attempt to downplay their ability and an attack on
their self-esteem. For this reason, those who receive
lateral negative feedback have reported that they feel
threatened, distracted, and discouraged (Brett &
Atwater, 2001; DeNisi et al., 1983; Druskat & Wolff,
1999; Rogers & Feller, 2016). That is, negative feedback from peers distracts recipients from creativity
tasks—low task processes—and causes them to pay
greater attention to meta-processes, which reduces
their creativity.
The current research tests these hypotheses in two
studies: Study 1 is a quasi-field experiment at a Korean company and Study 2 is a laboratory experiment at a large North American university. By
demonstrating consistent support for our hypotheses
across the two studies, our research makes important

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contributions to the literature. We not only resolve the inconsistency of the relationship between negative feedback and recipient creativity
but also integrate several theoretical arguments,
variably applied in past research, under two essential mechanisms: task processes and metaprocesses. In addition, we push the boundary of
feedback intervention theory by providing an important, albeit neglected, boundary condition—the
direction of feedback flow—which determines the
mechanisms underlying the relationship between
negative feedback and creativity. Figure 1 depicts
our theoretical framework.

THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT
Defining Negative Feedback
“Feedback” herein refers to information regarding
whether one’s level of creativity meets the organizational standard(s). When feedback provides
information indicating a “creativity–standard gap”—
that is, a discrepancy showing that the demonstrated
level of creativity is below the accepted standard—the
feedback is considered “negative.” We propose to investigate negative feedback in relation to recipient
creativity for two reasons. First, from a theoretical
perspective, negative feedback has strong potential to
contribute to recipient creativity. If the feedback recipients are receptive, negative feedback identifies the
insufficiency in their current level of creativity and
creates dissatisfaction where none previously existed.
This dissatisfaction is important because creativity is
often derived from the rejection of previous thought
patterns and behavior, and negative feedback informs
feedback recipients that their current levels of creativity should be improved in more novel and useful
ways (George, 2007; Zhou & George, 2001). Second,
negative feedback is prevalent in organizations and a
primary means by which managers influence employee behavior and performance (Ilgen et al., 1979).
For example, according to Zenger and Folkman’s
(2017) study of 328 managers and approximately
4,200 followers (13 followers per manager on average),
the managers perceived themselves as effective leaders when they offered criticism or negative feedback,
and, thus, they frequently offered negative feedback
to followers to induce meaningful changes in the
followers’ behavior and performance. This led the
followers to perceive that negative feedback was
pervasive in their organizations. Considering its
utility for recipient creativity and the pervasiveness in organizations, we believe that a systematic

April

investigation of negative feedback and its effects on
recipient creativity is important. In the following
sections, we review past research on the relationship between negative feedback and recipient creativity and identify both theoretical and empirical
inconsistencies in this relationship.
Inconsistent Theories and Empirical Evidence on
Negative Feedback and Creativity
Our comprehensive review of past research on the
link between negative feedback and recipient creativity revealed perplexing results; past studies have
used a variety of contradicting theories and have
reported a mix of positive, negative, and null relationships. Table 1 summarizes the contexts and results of past studies.1
Researchers who found a positive relationship
between negative feedback and creativity shared a
similar perspective (Fang et al., 2014; Vuori & Huy,
2015). These authors argued that negative feedback
creates dissatisfaction with their current level of
creativity. This dissatisfaction in turn incentivizes
feedback recipients to look closely at the processes
involved in creativity tasks in order to identify opportunities for improvement and fill the gap by
implementing better task strategies. In contrast, the
researchers who found a negative relationship between negative feedback and recipient creativity
focused on the perceived threat resulting from negative feedback (Van Dijk & Kluger, 2011; Zhou,
1998). This perspective suggests that negative feedback threatens recipients’ core beliefs about themselves, their abilities, and their status in the eyes of
others and that the experience of a threatened selfconcept reduces creativity because threatened recipients disengage from any experimentation and
creative attempts to improve their creativity.
Both of these theoretical perspectives reveal fundamental aspects of the negative feedback–creativity
relationship, and, therefore, the present research
strives to integrate the two perspectives into a
broader framework. To accomplish this integration,
we utilize feedback intervention theory (Kluger &
DeNisi, 1996), which parsimoniously incorporates
the two theoretical perspectives.

1
Two studies in this section (Fodor & Carver, 2000;
Zhou, 1998) did not report the main effect of negative
feedback on creativity. Thus, we manually calculated the
effect using the means, standard deviations, and degrees of
freedom reported in the papers.

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FIGURE 1
Theoretical Framework
Direction of Feedback Flow
1. Bottom-up Feedback Flow
2. Top-down Feedback Flow
3. Lateral Feedback Flow
Recipient Reactions
Toward Negative Feedback
Task Processes
Recipient
Creativity

Negative Feedback
Targeted at Creativity
Meta-Processes

Reconciling the Inconsistent Negative
Feedback–Creativity Relationship
The primary theoretical innovation of feedback
intervention theory (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996) lies in
the introduction of two separate processes—task
processes and meta-processes—that are used to explain how a feedback recipient responds to negative
feedback. “Task processes” refer to the mechanisms

by which feedback recipients attempt to improve
their current creativity by generating better, diverse
strategies for their creativity tasks. In creativity tasks,
the most common pitfall is that of using existing or
routinized task strategies. Employees who work on
creativity tasks tend to overly rely on existing task
strategies, or task routines, and they are less inclined
to experiment with new task strategies. This is because employees routinize existing task strategies

TABLE 1
Summary of Studies Linking Negative Feedback and Recipient Creativity
Study and Context

Feedback Directions

Findings

Laboratory experiment with undergraduate students
(Zhou, 1998)

Top down

Laboratory experiment with undergraduate students
(Fodor & Carver, 2000)

Top down

Interviews and survey with managers in the eastern
United States (Ford & Gioia, 2000)
Field survey with professional employees (George &
Zhou, 2001)
Laboratory experiments with undergraduate students
(Ilies & Judge, 2005)

Bottom up

Laboratory experiments with undergraduate students
(Van Dijk & Kluger, 2011)

Not specified

Field survey with professional employees (Hon et al.,
2013)
A simulation model study (Fang et al., 2014)

Top down

Qualitative interview study with Nokia’s managers
and external experts (Vuori & Huy, 2015)

Bottom up

[Negative] Participants who received negative
feedback showed lower creativity than those who
received positive feedback.
[Null] Creativity in the negative feedback condition
was not statistically different from creativity in the
positive feedback and control conditions.
[Positive] Negative feedback was positively related to
decision creativity.
[Null] There was a non-significant correlation
between feedback valence and creative behavior.
[Negative] Participants who received negative
feedback showed downward goal revision in
Remote Associates Test.
[Negative] Negative feedback lead to a reduced
number of ideas generated compared to positive
feedback.
[Null] There was a non-significant correlation
between negative feedback and creativity.
[Positive] Sugarcoating or distorting negative feedback
reduced organizational learning, which in turn
decreased innovation.
[Positive] Middle managers blocked the flow of
negative feedback to upper management, which
hampered innovation.

Top down
Top down

Not specified

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over time through repeated exposure (Kilduff, 1993;
March, 1991; March & Simon, 1958). Employees’
tendency to stick to existing task strategies could
increase their routine performance because it ensures that employees reliably perform their routine
tasks without errors. However, this tendency is detrimental to creativity because creativity often requires deviation from routines and the status quo
(Anderson et al., 2014; Zhou & George, 2001). Indeed, the evidence has shown that employees increased their creativity by experimenting with new
ways of performing their tasks, while sticking to
existing task strategies hampered their creativity
(Anderson et al., 2014; Kim & Zhong, 2017; March,
1991). In other words, task processes are essential
mechanisms for employee creativity. Task processes
are highly congruent with the theories used in past
research that found a positive relationship between
negative feedback and creativity (e.g., Fang et al.,
2014; Vuori & Huy, 2015).
Alternatively, “meta-processes” refer to the mechanism whereby negative feedback threatens recipients’ beliefs about their self-concept, their ability to
perform creativity tasks, and their social image perceived by feedback senders. Responding to negative
feedback by attending to meta-processes, recipients
direct their attention toward the threatening consequences of negative feedback. Specifically, recipients
worry about how negative feedback affects the assessments of their own ability (e.g., “Does this feedback suggest that I’m incompetent?”) or whether
negative feedback implies changes in the recipients’
important social relationships (e.g., “Does this mean
that my supervisor does not like me?”). This
threatened mindset inhibits recipients from taking
risks by experimenting with creative ideas (Förster,
Friedman, & Liberman, 2004; Friedman & Förster,
2001; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996) and lowers the mental
resources and cognitive capacity that should be allocated to creative processes (see, for a review,
Byron, Khazanchi, & Nazarian, 2010). Thus, metaprocesses prevent recipients from directly addressing
the problems with their current level of creativity and
leave them in a threatened mindset, which in turn
reduces their creativity. Meta-processes are in line
with the logic presented by the past research that
found a negative relationship between negative
feedback and recipient creativity (e.g., Van Dijk &
Kluger, 2011; Zhou, 1998).
In summary, feedback intervention theory suggests that negative feedback has the potential to both
increase and decrease creativity via task processes
and meta-processes. Therefore, it is not surprising

April

that past researchers have reported contradictory
empirical evidence on the relationship between
negative feedback and recipient creativity. Despite
its usefulness in understanding the inconsistent relationship, feedback intervention theory does not
offer insight into when negative feedback recipients
adopt one of these two processes. Our research aims
to expand feedback intervention theory by investigating an important, albeit neglected, boundary condition that channels negative feedback to creativity
through task processes and meta-processes. We suggest that the direction of feedback flow is the sine qua
non for understanding the relationship between negative feedback and recipient creativity and resolves
the inconsistency in this relationship.
The Role of the Direction of Feedback Flow
We define the “direction of feedback flow” as the
transfer of feedback from sender(s) to recipient(s)
wherein the two parties have the same or different
organizational ranks. We argue that the direction of
feedback flow should not be isolated from feedback
research because feedback does not occur spontaneously in organizations. Rather, it occurs within the
social, organizational contexts that create the basis of
the evaluation standards. Employees try to meet the
standards, and evaluators rate employee creativity
by considering the gap between demonstrated creativity and the standards (De Stobbeleir, Ashford, &
Buyens, 2011; Zhou, 2008). As a result, in a study of
feedback, it is necessary for researchers to specify the
social and organizational contexts, including the
identities of the feedback sender(s) and recipient(s)
(Zhou, 2008). By introducing a novel concept—the
direction of feedback flow—the current research
specifies the social and organizational context within
which negative feedback flows, and examines its influences on the relationship between negative feedback and recipient creativity.
Specifically, we investigate three directions of
feedback flow: “bottom up” (from followers to supervisors), “top down” (from supervisors to followers), and “lateral” (from peers to peers). Although
the top-down feedback flow may be the most frequently observed direction, organizations are beginning to realize the value of feedback that flows
up the hierarchy and feedback that flows laterally
between employees at the same organizational rank
(Antonioni, 1996; Brett & Atwater, 2001; DeNisi &
Kluger, 2000). Nevertheless, a comprehensive and
systematic investigation on the roles of the direction of feedback flow is lacking in organizational

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research. The majority of past research has considered only top-down feedback (e.g., Fodor & Carver,
2000; George & Zhou, 2001; Zhou, 1998). A small
minority of the research has looked at bottom-up
feedback (e.g., Ford & Gioia, 2000; Vuori & Huy,
2015), and other research did not specify the
senders and recipients (e.g., Fang et al., 2014; Van
Dijk & Kluger, 2011). Interestingly, researchers who
examined the top-down feedback flow generally
found a negative relationship between negative
feedback and creativity, while those who investigated the bottom-up feedback flow found a positive
relationship. These results show the importance of
the direction of feedback flow as a boundary condition in the relationship between negative feedback and creativity. We theorize that each direction
of feedback flow determines a feedback recipient’s
focus—that is, toward task processes versus metaprocesses—and its subsequent effect on creativity.
Bottom-Up and Top-Down Negative Feedback
Flows and Creativity
The bottom-up feedback flow. Research on social
power provides a basis for understanding how
bottom-up and top-down feedback flows influence
the relationship between negative feedback and
creativity. “Social power” refers to asymmetric control over valuable resources, rewards, punishments,
and outcomes (Keltner et al., 2003; Magee & Galinsky,
2008). Differences in hierarchical rank create a situation in which an employee at a higher rank possesses
social power over other employees at lower ranks;
accordingly, manipulations of the hierarchical rank
have been frequently used to study social power and
its effects (e.g., DeNisi et al., 1983; Jordan, Sivanathan,
& Galinsky, 2011).
Our research relies on the social power literature
to suggest that the bottom-up feedback flow enables
negative feedback recipients (in this case, supervisors) to attend to task processes rather than to metaprocesses. Regardless of their findings, the feedback
researchers listed in Table 1 acknowledged that
negative feedback hurts recipients’ feelings to a certain degree, as it criticizes some aspects of their
current creativity. To utilize negative feedback constructively, recipients should understand it strictly
within the boundary of the tasks rather than expanding its implications to personal or task-unrelated
matters (e.g., concerning their image in the eyes of
the feedback sender). Research on social power has
shown that supervisors may be able to do so better
than followers, for several reasons. One major reason

589

for this difference is that supervisors tend to be more
approach oriented toward the dissenting, counterattitudinal opinions provided by their followers.
Supervisors are aware that their followers generally cannot engender serious social consequences
(e.g., pay decreases and demotions) as followers
have neither the formal authority nor social power to
do so (Bacharach & Lawler, 1980; Emerson, 1962;
Pfeffer & Salancik, 1974; Yukl, 2010). Such awareness helps supervisors better cope with the uncomfortable feelings that negative feedback elicits and be
more approach oriented to the potential positive
outcomes that could be attained by changing their
behaviors and correcting the problems. In line with
this argument, Keltner et al. (2003: 268–269) suggested that:
The experience of power involves the awareness that
one can act at will without interference or serious
social consequences . . . Being unconstrained by
others’ evaluations or the consequences of one’s actions, people with elevated power should be disposed
to elevated levels of approach-related affect, cognition, and behavior.

In addition, social power tends to increase taskfocused and goal-directed behaviors (Karremans &
Smith, 2010; Smith et al., 2008; Steele et al., 2002).
As mentioned earlier, the main purpose of providing negative feedback is to identify the creativity–
standard gap in order to help recipients close this gap
by improving their current level of creativity. However, negative feedback often distracts recipients’
focus from their task and directs their attention to
task-irrelevant matters, such as concern about their
image in the eyes of others (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996).
Therefore, as long as recipients can maintain their
focus on their creativity task, they are more likely to
utilize negative feedback to improve creativity. Evidence from the social power literature has shown
that the powerful, relative to the powerless, can
better plan and update task-relevant information and
suppress their attention to task-irrelevant information in order to achieve their goals (Smith et al.,
2008; Smith & Trope, 2006), even when the information threatens their self-image (Beilock, Rydell, &
McConnell, 2007; Steele et al., 2002).
Finally, social distance theory (Magee & Smith,
2013) provides a relational perspective regarding
why the bottom-up feedback flow may positively
relate negative feedback to recipient creativity. This
theory suggests that high-power employees have
a greater sense of social distance; namely, “a subjective perception or experience of distance from

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another person or other persons” (Magee & Smith,
2013: 2). With the heightened level of social distance,
high-power employees pay less attention to their social relationships with others; instead, they tend to
strengthen their focus on the achievement of ultimate
goals and maintain high levels of self-control in the
process of goal pursuit. Furthermore, in anticipation
of social disapproval, the sense of social distance
keeps high-power employees from feeling socially
engaging emotions, such as embarrassment and feeling threatened, since they value communal, intimate
social relationships less (Magee & Smith, 2013). Thus,
in the bottom-up negative feedback flow from followers to supervisors, supervisors’ sense of social
distance is likely to help them maintain their focus on
creativity tasks and overcome the ego-threatening
implications of negative feedback. In summary, in the
bottom-up feedback flow, supervisors likely utilize
negative feedback for their creativity by attending to
task processes rather than meta-processes.
The top-down feedback flow. In contrast to the
bottom-up feedback flow, the top-down feedback
flow may lead feedback recipients (i.e., followers) to
respond to negative feedback by attending to metaprocesses instead of task processes, as the asymmetrical social power in the supervisor–follower
relationship likely leads followers to be more vigilant to criticism from their supervisor and more
concerned about their image in the eyes of their supervisors. In general, employees have a strong desire
to maintain their membership in the organization
and move up the organizational hierarchy. To do so,
they need favorable evaluations and support from
their supervisors as supervisors have the power to
satisfy or impede their desires. As stated by Keltner
et al. (2003: 269):
Less powerful individuals have less access to material, social, and cultural resources and are more subject to social threats and punishments. Thus, they are
more sensitive to the evaluations and potential constraints of others.

Furthermore, as suggested above, people with
low social power, relative to those with high social
power, tend to decrease their task-focused attention
and fail to suppress their attention to task-irrelevant
information (Smith et al., 2008; Smith & Trope, 2006).
This is even more pronounced when information that
threatens the recipients’ self-image (e.g., negative
feedback) is present (Beilock et al., 2007; Steele et al.,
2002). Finally, low-power people tend to have a
low social distance and value social relationships
with others, rendering them more vigilant to negative

April

feedback and criticisms from others (Magee & Smith,
2013). Taken together, we argue that the top-down
feedback flow likely directs feedback recipients’ (i.e.,
followers’) focus away from task processes to metaprocesses, which is detrimental to their creativity.
Lateral Negative Feedback Flow and Creativity
While the bottom-up and the top-down feedback
flows involve hierarchical relationships in which
social power is asymmetrical, the lateral feedback
flow does not involve social power differences between senders and recipients. Instead, it is often
characterized as a competitive relationship in which
peers strive to attain limited organizational resources
(e.g., promotions, pay increases, or training opportunities; Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Rarely, in organizations with a social hierarchy that does not resemble a
pyramid, competition may not be an essential feature
because such organizations have several higher positions available, allowing all employees to move up
the hierarchy. “Many real-world situations, by contrast, offer rewards that depend on an individual’s
performance relative to others” (O’Keeffe, Viscusi, &
Zeckhauser, 1984: 27), and the number of people at
the top is significantly smaller than the number of
people at the bottom (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Thus,
competition is an inherent characteristic that defines
employee relationships in most organizations.
However, this does not mean that the workplace is
“the war of all against all.” Instead, employees most
likely compete only with their “reference group,” a
term that refers to a group of employees whose behaviors and performance are compared against each
other (Bandura, 1977; Festinger, 1962). The selection
of a reference group is based on shared similarities in
members’ experience and ability (Festinger, 1954;
Mumford, 1983). In organizations, as peers have
similar levels of work tenure, experience, ability,
and knowledge, peer groups become the reference
groups (Bandura, 1977, 1978, 2001). Most importantly, social comparisons based on appropriate
reference groups are related to employee perceptions of organizational justice. Unfair comparisons
for performance ratings (e.g., between followers and
leaders) significantly undermine employee perceptions of both distributive and procedural fairness
(Bandura, 1977; Festinger, 1962), which results in
detrimental organizational outcomes, such as high
levels of turnover, low commitment, low job satisfaction, and low job performance (see, for a review,
Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). Therefore, organizations assess employee performance

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through social comparisons within a peer group and
provide employees with results in the form of performance feedback (Mumford, 1983).
Regarding the lateral negative feedback flow, the
nonhierarchical and competitive nature of peer relationships is likely to direct recipients’ focus toward
meta-processes and away from task processes. In a peer
relationship, recipients likely interpret lateral negative
feedback in an unproductive way because they are
concerned about the possibility of lagging behind their
competitors and because they strive to stand out
among their peers (Bendersky & Shah, 2012; Cho,
Overbeck, & Carnevale, 2011; DeNisi et al., 1983;
Rogers & Feller, 2016; Tauer & Harackiewicz, 1999).
For this reason, lateral negative feedback “could be
viewed as an attack on self-esteem” and as an attempt
to downplay a competitor’s abilities (DeNisi et al.,
1983: 458). Several researchers have provided empirical evidence that lateral negative feedback induces the
negative responses of feedback recipients, particularly
in relation to meta-processes. For instance, DeNisi et al.
(1983) designed a longitudinal laboratory experiment to
test whether lateral negative feedback causes recipients
to exhibit negative reactions. They manipulated the
lateral negative feedback by simply indicating that it
came from a peer, and they found that recipients demonstrated unproductive reactions. The lateral negative
feedback decreased recipients’ satisfaction with and
trust in (or cohesiveness with) their peers; ultimately, it
significantly impaired the recipients’ task focus.
Following DeNisi et al. (1983), several other researchers have provided further evidence that lateral
negative feedback threatens recipients’ self-concept
and distracts from their task focus. For example,
Druskat and Wolff (1999) found that, even though
lateral negative feedback had a developmental purpose, recipients perceived it as detrimental to peer
communication, recipient development, peer cohesion, satisfaction with peers, and the viability of their
peer group. Brett and Atwater (2001) offered more direct evidence that lateral negative feedback threatens
recipient ego and self-image. In their study, recipients
of lateral negative feedback reported that they felt discouraged, criticized, and confused by this feedback.
More recently, Rogers and Feller (2016) showed that,
when people identified a negative gap between their
creative performance (i.e., levels of excellence in essay
writing) and a peer’s creative performance (i.e., the
reference point), they felt that their self-image and
perceived abilities were threatened. Participants reported that they felt discouraged and disappointed by
the gap and that they were not the right person for the
creativity task. In addition, the recipients perceived

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that their writing would not attain the same levels of
excellence as their peers’ essays, and, as a result, their
task focus was significantly distracted. Relying on
these findings, we suggest that the lateral negative
feedback flow likely leads negative feedback recipients
to attend to meta-processes rather than to task processes, which will ultimately reduce their creativity.
To summarize, we suggest that the direction of feedback flow is an important boundary condition of the
negative feedback and creativity relationship. The
bottom-up negative feedback helps recipients come up
with better task strategies for their creativity tasks (task
processes), which subsequently increases their creativity. In contrast, top-down and lateral negative feedback
directs recipients’ focus away from creativity tasks to
task-irrelevant matters, such as concerns about their
ability, their social relationships with feedback senders,
and their self-concept (i.e., meta-processes), which
prevents them from engaging in experimentation and
creative attempts, and, in turn, decreases their creativity. Thus, we propose the following two hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1. The relationship between negative
feedback and recipient creativity is moderated by the
direction of feedback flow; in the bottom-up feedback
flow, negative feedback is positively associated with
recipient creativity, whereas, in the top-down and
lateral feedback flows, negative feedback is negatively associated with recipient creativity.
Hypothesis 2. Task processes and meta-processes
mediate the relationship between negative feedback,
the direction of feedback flow, and recipient creativity; in the bottom-up feedback flow, task processes
mediate the positive relationship between negative
feedback and recipient creativity, whereas, in the topdown and lateral feedback flows, meta-processes
mediate the negative relationship between negative
feedback and recipient creativity.

OVERVIEW OF THE STUDIES
We conducted two studies—one quasi-field experiment and one laboratory experiment—to test
our theoretical model. Both studies tested the full
moderated mediation model. In Study 1, we recruited
225 employees who were working in creative jobs—
designing new products, researching and developing
new products, and developing marketing plans—in a
Korean company. Employees were quasi-randomly
assigned to one of three conditions pertaining to the
direction of feedback flow: bottom up, top down, or
lateral. The company employed bottom-up, topdown, and lateral feedback in their quarterly evaluations. Relying on this natural organizational setting,

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we measured employee perception of the extent to
which their quarterly evaluation was negative. Creativity was measured by focal employees’ superiors
two months after the quarterly evaluations. Study 2
sought to replicate the results of Study 1 with 356
undergraduate students in a large North American
university. We conducted a laboratory experiment to
provide evidence of causality by manipulating both
negative feedback and the direction of feedback flow.

STUDY 1: QUASI-FIELD EXPERIMENT
Procedure
We conducted the study in the product development and management department at a health food
company in Korea. The main duties of employees in
this department were (a) designing new products, (b)
researching and developing new products, and (c)
developing marketing plans (e.g., promotion, advertisement) for new products. According to our interviews with the three executives of this company,
creativity is the defining job characteristic of employees in the department, and, in formal performance
evaluations, employees are rated regarding how creative they have been in their jobs. The company operates with a team-based structure, and one team leader
manages each team. Each team also has a deputy team
leader, who acts as a team leader when necessary. The
team leader reports to his/her division head. In our
study, we measured the top-down, bottom-up, and
lateral feedback received by focal employees in the
natural context of the company’s official quarterly
evaluations. Two months later, we collected ratings of
the focal employees’ creativity from their superiors.
The company provides employees with quarterly
performance feedback—in March, June, September,
and December. In alternating quarters, team members (or followers in each team) receive lateral feedback from their peers (in March and September) and
top-down feedback from their team leader (in June
and December). Team leaders also receive feedback
from different sources in alternating quarters. Since
team leaders have limited contact with their peers,
they receive bottom-up feedback from their team
members, instead of receiving lateral feedback in
March and September. In June and December, team
leaders receive feedback from their division heads.
The feedback that employees receive (regardless of
its source) includes both a numerical evaluation and
written feedback. The numerical evaluation ranges
from 0% to 100%; the higher the score, the better the
employee performance. In the written feedback, a

April

feedback sender specifies a recipient’s strengths,
weaknesses, and any other information that the
sender thinks is important for improving the recipient’s task behavior.2 We coordinated our data collection with an executive member of the human
resources department, who allowed us to collect data
from one focal employee per team.
Relying on the unique, natural setting of this
company, we designed a quasi-field experiment using March and June quarterly evaluations. We created the quasi-field experimental conditions,
manipulating the direction of feedback flow by selectively inviting participants in either the March or
the June evaluations. That is, we created three conditions, and each condition contained about one
third of the sample. The bottom-up feedback flow
condition contained team leaders who received
feedback from their team members in the March
evaluation. The lateral feedback flow condition
contained team members who received feedback
from their peers in the March evaluation. The topdown feedback flow condition contained team
members who received feedback from their supervisors in the June evaluation. To create the three
conditions, in the beginning of March, we sent out an
invitation email to all team members and team
leaders at the product development and management department. After receiving responses from
employees who were willing to take part, we selected
one participant from each team and assigned them to
a condition before they received their quarterly
feedback at the end of March. When multiple team
members from the same team volunteered for this
2
The numerical evaluations in the bottom-up and lateral
feedback flows are averaged across raters, as there are
multiple raters (i.e., multiple followers for the bottom-up
feedback flow and multiple peers for the lateral feedback
flow), whereas, in the top-down feedback flow, the score is
not averaged, as there is only one rater (i.e., supervisor).
Thus, in the numerical evaluations, raters in the bottom-up
and lateral feedback flows are anonymous, whereas the
top-down feedback flow reveals the identity of the feedback sender. However, the written feedback is done nonanonymously—the company has all the feedback senders
specify their names so that the feedback recipients can
receive further feedback after the quarterly evaluations.
Note that it is the top-down evaluation that determines the
final grade of each employee at the end of the year; the
bottom-up and lateral feedback are for informative and
developmental purposes. This setting is in line with that of
the majority of organizations in which supervisors control
employee performance evaluation and other important
organizational resources, as we theorized earlier.

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Kim and Kim

study, we randomly selected one. When a team
leader and team members from the same team volunteered, we randomly chose one, if possible, but
were forced to preferentially choose supervisors in
some cases in order to ensure equal distribution of
the number of participants across conditions (among
the volunteers, there were obviously more team
members than team leaders, which gave us a larger
available pool of the former than the latter). For this
reason, this study is a quasi-field experiment in
which we quasi-randomly, rather than fully randomly, invited participants to the three conditions.
Following completion of the recruitment process,
researchers visited the company within a week of
employees receiving their March and June quarterly
evaluations to measure negative feedback, task processes, and meta-processes. Two months after each of
our visits (i.e., in May and August, respectively), we
measured creativity from a focal employee’s superior.
Thus, the data collection occurred at four distinct time
points, but the data were collapsed to create two
waves of time-lagged data. Time 1 represented the
points at which negative feedback, task processes,
and meta-processes were measured, and Time 2 (two
months after Time 1) represented the point at which
superiors evaluated the focal employees’ creativity. The final data encompassed 225 employees (response rate 5 54.61%; NBottom-up negative feedback 5 80,
NLateral negative feedback 5 73, NTop-down negative feedback 5
72). The sample contained 104 females (45.34%) and
121 males (54.66%), with an average age of 32.38
years (SD 5 4.65). The average tenure of our sample
was 6.37 years (SD 5 2.69). The majority of employees
had completed a bachelor’s degree (87.6%) and
12.4% had completed graduate degrees.
Manipulation and Measures
We created Korean versions of the surveys by following the survey translation procedures recommended by Brislin (1990). All measures used a Likert
scale, with responses ranging from “1” (strongly
disagree) to “7” (strongly agree).
The direction of feedback flow. As previously
mentioned, we manipulated the direction of feedback
flow by collecting data from employees in the different
positions (either team members or team leaders) in the
different quarterly evaluations (in March and June).
This allowed us to create three conditions: the top-down
feedback flow condition (feedback recipient 5 team
members, feedback sender 5 team leaders, time of
feedback 5 June), the lateral feedback flow condition
(feedback recipient 5 team members, feedback sender 5

593

other team members, time of feedback 5 March), and
the bottom-up feedback flow condition (feedback
recipient 5 team leaders, feedback sender 5 team
members, time of feedback 5 March).
Because the conditions are categorical without any
rank order, we represented the three conditions using two dummy variables for our analyses (Hayes,
2013). We chose the bottom-up feedback flow condition as the reference group, because it is the only
condition where we expected a positive relationship
between negative feedback and recipient creativity;
in the other two conditions, we expected negative
relationships between negative feedback and recipient creativity. By choosing the bottom-up feedback
flow condition as the reference group, we were able
to investigate differences between the bottom-up
feedback flow condition and the top-down feedback
flow condition using our first dummy variable (D1),
and differences between the bottom-up feedback
flow condition and the lateral feedback flow condition using our second dummy variable (D2). Specifically, we followed “indicator” dummy coding
(Hayes, 2013); the dummy coding in each condition
was as follows: in the bottom-up feedback flow
condition, D1 5 0 and D2 5 0; in the top-down
feedback flow condition, D1 5 1 and D2 5 0; in the
lateral feedback flow condition, D1 5 0 and D2 5 1.
Negative feedback. Participants evaluated the
extent to which their quarterly evaluation was negative. To measure negative feedback, we modified the
7-item feedback valence scale developed by George
and Zhou (2001). The original scale captures both
positive and negative feedback on the same continuum.3 Among the seven items in the original scale,
four of them clearly reflect negative feedback and the
other three measure positive feedback. We modified
the latter three items so that they rated negative
feedback. The items are reported in Appendix A.
Positive feedback. Although the primary purposes of our research were to investigate the relationship between negative feedback and creativity
3

The design of the original George and Zhou (2001)
feedback scale assumes that negative and positive feedback are on the same continuum. This assumption can be
problematic, though, as it is hard to interpret the scale
midpoint. The scale midpoint implies two different situations simultaneously: (1) a feedback source providing a
high volume of both positive and negative feedback and (2)
a feedback source that provides minimal feedback of any
type, positive or negative. We discuss the theoretical and
methodological aspects of this issue in the General Discussion section.

594

Academy of Management Journal

and to resolve the inconsistency in this relationship,
we also measured positive feedback, for three reasons. First, we tested whether employees differentiate negative feedback from positive feedback. We
tested this through our confirmatory factor analysis
(detailed below). Second, we examined whether the
influence of negative feedback is distinctive from
that of positive feedback. Lastly, we controlled for it
when examining the relationship between negative
feedback and creativity. The participants rated the
degree to which their quarterly evaluation was positive using another modified version of George and
Zhou’s (2001) feedback valance scale, with the items
rephrased to inquire about positive feedback. We
report all the items in Appendix A.
Task processes and meta-processes. We modified existing scales to measure task processes and
meta-processes, based on the conceptualizations of
both processes delineated in feedback intervention
theory (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). To measure task
processes (a 5 .93), we created a 4-item scale by
modifying the scales for challenge construal (Elliot &
Reis, 2003; McGregor & Elliot, 2002) and primary
appraisal (Tomaka, Palacios, Schneider, Colotla,
Concha, & Herrald, 1999). To measure meta-processes
(a 5 .93), we created a 5-item scale by modifying the
scales for threat construal (Elliot & Reis, 2003;
McGregor & Elliot, 2002) and secondary appraisal
(Tomaka et al., 1999). All the items are reported in
Appendix A.
Creativity. Superiors rated the focal employee’s
creativity using Zhou and George’s (2001) 13-item
scale of creative performance. Specifically, division
heads evaluated the creativity of team leaders in the
bottom-up feedback flow condition, team leaders
evaluated the creativity of the focal team members in
the lateral feedback flow condition, and deputy team
leaders evaluated the creativity of focal team members in the top-down feedback flow condition. The
reason we collected creativity evaluations from the
deputy team leaders in the top-down feedback flow
condition, rather than collecting it from the primary
team leaders, was to avoid artificially inflated correlations between negative feedback and creativity.
In the top-down feedback flow, team members received feedback from their team leader. Collecting
creativity ratings from those same team leaders could
have introduced same-source biases into the data in
this condition. A sample item was “This employee is
a good source of creative ideas” (a 5 .96).
Control variables. We controlled for five demographic variables: age, gender, education, tenure
with the organization, and tenure with feedback

April

sender, because there could be individual differences when recipients interpret feedback (Kluger &
DeNisi, 1996). Age, tenure with organization, and
tenure with feedback sender were measured in years.
Gender was measured as a dichotomous variable:
“0” for female and “1” for male. Education was coded
in the following manner: “1” for a high school graduate, “2” for a graduate from a two-year community
college program, “3” for a person with a degree from
a four-year university program, and “4” for participant’s with a master’s degree or PhD. In addition, we
controlled for creative role identity (a 5 .93) and
creative self-efficacy (a 5 .89). It is possible that recipients who believe that they are creative or efficacious on creativity tasks are more likely to seek ways
of improving their creativity (Shalley, Zhou, &
Oldham, 2004), and thus they may be more receptive to negative feedback. We also included positive
feedback to investigate the unique influences of
negative feedback on creativity.4
Confirmatory Factor Analysis
We conducted confirmatory factor analysis to examine the psychometric validity of our measures
using a variety of indicators of model fit: a chi-square
statistic (x2), the Tucker–Lewis index (TLI), the
standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR),
the comparative fit index (CFI), and the root mean
squared error of approximation (RMSEA). This
analysis included the negative feedback, task processes, meta-processes, and creativity items. Furthermore, we added positive feedback to investigate
whether participants differentiated negative feedback from positive feedback. According to the standards recommended by Hu and Bentler (1998), our
confirmatory factor analysis indicated a good fit for
the five-factor model.5 The x2 value was 890.794
(df 5 550, p , .001), TLI was .957, SRMR was .043,
4

Note that the results remained the same with or without
the control variables.
5
Although the chi-square test showed a poor fit, all of
other indicators showed good fits. Several scholars have
noted that chi-square indices may mislead the interpretation of model fit because it is too sensitive to sample size
and the violation of an assumption underlying the test
(e.g., multivariate normality of variables). “Hence, using
chi-square to test the hypothesis that the population covariance matrix matches the model-implied covariance
matrix is too strong to be realistic” (Hu & Bentler, 1998:
425). Given that the other indices, except for those of the
chi-square test, were above the traditional cut-off values,
we conclude that our five-factor model has a good fit.

2020

Kim and Kim

CFI was .960, and the RMSEA was .050. The average levels of the standardized loadings on the five
constructs were as follows: creativity 5 .83, negative
feedback 5 .86, meta-processes 5 .85, task processes 5
.88, and positive feedback 5 .90.
In addition, we compared our five-factor model
with potential alternative models. The alternative
model showing the highest fit was a four-factor
model, which combined task processes and metaprocesses, x2(554) 5 1549.98, p , .001; TLI 5 .875;
SRMR 5 .073; CFI 5 .884; RMSEA 5 .085. However,
a comparison analysis of our original five-factor
model and the four-factor alternative model showed
that our model has a significantly better fit than the
alternative model, Dx2(4) 5 659.19, p , .001. These
results show strong evidence that our variables were
valid, and that employees differentiated all of the
important variables from one another. Importantly,
employees differently perceived negative and positive feedback according to the confirmatory factor
analysis, which suggests that each captures different
aspect of feedback.
Results of Study 1
The means, standard deviations, and correlations
for all variables in Study 1 are presented in Table 2.
To test our hypotheses, we used multiple hierarchical regression, combined with conditional indirect
effect analysis—moderated mediation analysis—
using the PROCESS macro developed by Hayes
(2013).
Hypothesis 1 predicted that, in the bottom-up
feedback flow condition, the relationship between
negative feedback and recipient creativity would be
positive, whereas, in the top-down and lateral feedback flow conditions, the relationship would be
negative. The results revealed that the interactions
between negative feedback and the two dummy
variables were significant. Specifically, Table 3
shows significant interactions between negative
feedback and D1 (bottom up 5 0, top down 5 1;
b 5 21.03, SE 5 0.15, t 5 26.94, p , .001), and
between negative feedback and D2 (bottom up 5 0,
lateral 5 1; b 5 20.97, SE 5 0.15, t 5 26.61, p , .001)
in predicting creativity. The result of the former interaction indicates that there is a significant slope
difference between the bottom-up and top-down
feedback flow conditions. The result of the latter
interaction indicates that there is a significant slope
difference between the bottom-up and the lateral
feedback flow conditions. We further investigated
these interactions by analyzing the simple slopes at

595

each value (0 or 1) of each moderator (D1 and D2).
The results showed that, in the bottom-up feedback
flow condition (from followers to supervisors; D1 5 0
and D2 5 0) the relationship between negative
feedback and recipient creativity was significantly
positive (b 5 0.48, SE 5 0.11, t 5 4.34, p , .001,
LLCI 5 0.264, ULCI 5 0.705). In the top-down feedback flow condition (from supervisors to followers;
D1 5 1 and D2 5 0), the relationship was significantly negative (b 5 20.54, SE 5 0.10, t 5 25.39, p ,
.001; LLCI 5 20.739, ULCI 5 20.343). In the lateral
feedback flow condition (from peers to peers; D1 5 0
and D2 5 1) the relationship was significantly negative (b 5 20.49, SE 5 0.10, t 5 24.94, p , .001,
LLCI 5 20.681, ULCI 5 20.293). Figure 2 depicts
these relationships. Hypothesis 1 was supported.
Hypothesis 2 posited that the moderated relationships between negative feedback, the direction
of feedback flow, and recipient creativity would be
mediated by task processes and meta-processes.
Before testing the moderated mediation hypothesis,
we conducted two separate analyses to examine the
interaction of negative feedback and the direction of
feedback flow in predicting task processes and metaprocesses. With regard to task processes, we found
significant interactions of negative feedback and D1
(b 5 20.94, SE 5 0.18, t 5 25.37, p , .001) and D2
(b 5 21.26, SE 5 0.18, t 5 27.22, p , .001). Table 3
summarizes the full results. The simple slope tests
showed that the bottom-up negative feedback enabled supervisors to focus on task processes (b 5
0.52, SE 5 0.13, t 5 3.89, p , .001, LLCI 5 0.255,
ULCI 5 0.778). However, the top-down negative
feedback (b 5 20.43, SE 5 0.12, t 5 23.58, p , .001,
LLCI 5 20.662, ULCI 5 20.192) and lateral negative
feedback (b 5 20.74, SE 5 0.12, t 5 26.36, p , .001,
LLCI 5 20.975, ULCI 5 20.513) significantly decreased employees’ focus on task processes. Figure 3
depicts these relationships.
Regarding meta-processes, the interactions that
negative feedback had with D1 (b 5 0.36, SE 5 0.17,
t 5 2.17, p 5 .031) and D2 (b 5 0.57, SE 5 0.17, t 5
3.47, p 5 .001) were both significant (see Table 3).
The simple slope tests revealed that the relationship
between negative feedback and meta-processes was
not significant in the bottom-up feedback flow condition (b 5 0.07, SE 5 0.13, t 5 0.59, p 5 .553,
LLCI 5 20.173, ULCI 5 0.322), but the relationship
was significantly positive in the top-down (b 5 0.43,
SE 5 0.11, t 5 3.86, p , .001, LLCI 5 0.212, ULCI 5
0.657) and lateral (b 5 0.65, SE 5 0.11, t 5 5.85, p ,
.001, LLCI 5 0.429, ULCI 5 0.865) feedback flow
conditions. Figure 4 illustrates these relationships.

14

13

12

11

4
5
6
7
8
9
10

3

2

1

4.46

5.28

5.44

2.15

4.86
3.35
5.14
0.54
32.38
3.08
6.37

3.98

1.21

1.15

1.08

0.84

1.35
1.16
1.07
0.50
4.65
0.51
2.69

1.09

0.47

0.47

0.32

0.32

SD

M

Note: n 5 225.
†
p , .10
*p , .05
**p , .01 (all tests two-tailed)

D1 (bottom
up 5 0; top
down 5 1)
D2 (bottom
up 5 0;
lateral 5 1)
Negative
Feedback
Task Processes
Meta-Processes
Creativity
Gender
Age
Education
Tenure with
Company
Tenure with
Team
Creative Role
Identity
Creative
Self-efficacy
Positive
Feedback

Variables

2.09
.09

2.04
2.04

2.26**

.09

.07

2.14*

.02

2.12†
.29**
2.17*
2.03
.13†
2.05
.02

3

2.02

2.18**
.09
2.05
2.04
2.04
2.03
.00

2.19**

2

.07

2.04

.02
.10
2.12†
2.01
2.41**
.05
2.25**

2.02

2.48**

1

2.10

.37**

.27**

2.07

2.44**
.37**
.05
.03
.02
.07

4

.05

2.18**

2.10

.06

2.46**
2.11
2.07
2.08
2.08

5

2.03

.14*

.16*

.00

2.01
.02
2.05
2.05

6

2.03

.13*

.14*

2.20**

.02
.12†
.03

7

2.02

.00

2.01

.08

.04
.33**

8

TABLE 2
Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations of Variables in Study 1

.04

.03

2.01

.03

2.04

9

2.05

2.05

2.09

.04

10

.07

2.19**

2.14*

11

.04

.71**

12

.05

13

596
Academy of Management Journal
April

2020

Kim and Kim

597

TABLE 3
Multiple Hierarchical Regression on Creativity, Task Processes, and Meta-Processes in Study 1
Creativity

Task Processes

Meta-Processes

Model 1

Model 2

Model 1

Model 2

Model 1

Model 2

Variables

b (SE)

b (SE)

b (SE)

b (SE)

b (SE)

b (SE)

Gender
Age
Education
Tenure with Company
Tenure with Team
Creative Role Identity
Creative Self-Efficacy
Positive Feedback
Negative Feedback
D1 (bottom up 5 0;
top down 5 1)
D2 (bottom up 5 0;
lateral 5 1)
Negative Feedback 3 D1
Negative Feedback 3 D2
F
DF
R2
DR2

20.09 (0.14)
20.01 (0.02)
20.11 (0.14)
20.04 (0.03)
0.04 (0.09)
0.10 (0.09)
0.08 (0.09)
20.09 (0.06)
20.24 (0.07)**
20.57 (0.20)**

20.08 (0.13)
20.02 (0.02)
20.10 (0.12)
20.02 (0.02)
0.06 (0.08)
0.08 (0.08)
0.07 (0.08)
20.03 (0.05)
0.48 (0.11)**
3.66 (0.63)**

20.05 (0.17)
0.00 (0.02)
0.01 (0.16)
0.04 (0.03)
0.02 (0.10)
0.01 (0.11)
0.44 (0.10)**
20.18 (0.07)*
20.29 (0.08)**
20.16 (0.23)

20.09 (0.15)
20.01 (0.02)
0.04 (0.15)
0.06 (0.03)†
0.02 (0.09)
20.02 (0.10)
0.41 (0.09)**
20.12 (0.06)†
0.52 (0.13)**
3.78 (0.75)**

20.11 (0.15)
20.00 (0.02)
20.13 (0.14)
20.01 (0.03)
0.01 (0.09)
0.08 (0.09)
20.25 (0.09)**
0.14 (0.06)*
0.42 (0.07)**
0.50 (0.20)*

20.09 (0.15)
0.00 (0.02)
20.14 (0.14)
20.02 (0.03)
0.01 (0.09)
0.10 (0.09)
20.24 (0.09)**
0.11 (0.06)†
0.08 (0.13)
21.01 (0.71)

20.43 (0.18)*

3.52 (0.61)**

20.57 (0.21)**

4.49 (0.72)**

0.57 (0.19)**

21.71 (0.68)*

2.61**
2.61**
.12
.12

21.03 (0.15)**
20.97 (0.15)**
7.41**
29.96**
.31
.19

5.52**
5.52**
.22
.22

20.94 (0.18) **
21.26 (0.18)**
10.09**
27.65**
.38
.16

5.24**
5.24**
.21
.21

0.36 (0.17)*
0.57 (0.17)**
5.58**
6.08**
.26
.05

Note: n 5 225.
†
p , .10
*p , .05
**p , .01 (all tests two-tailed)

Lastly, we tested the full moderated mediation
model using a conditional indirect effect analysis
with 10,000 bias-corrected bootstrap resampling
(Hayes, 2013). The results showed that, in the bottomup feedback flow condition, the positive relationship
between negative feedback and creativity was mediated by task processes (estimated size of the indirect
effect 5 0.08, SE 5 0.04, LLCI 5 0.011, ULCI 5 0.181),
but not by meta-processes (estimated size of the indirect effect 5 20.03, SE 5 0.04, LLCI 5 20.114,
ULCI 5 0.046). In the top-down feedback flow condition, the negative relationship between negative
feedback and creativity was mediated by both
task processes (estimated size of the indirect
effect 5 20.07, SE 5 0.04, LLCI 5 20.157,
ULCI 5 20.010) and meta-processes (estimated size
of the indirect effect 5 20.15, SE 5 0.08,
LLCI 5 20.356, ULCI 5 20.037). In the lateral
feedback flow condition, the negative relationship
between negative feedback and creativity was
also mediated by both task processes (estimated
size of the indirect effect 5 20.12, SE 5 0.06,
LLCI 5 20.246, ULCI 5 20.021) and meta-processes

(estimated size of the indirect effect 5 20.23, SE 5
0.09, LLCI 5 20.433, ULCI 5 20.082). These results
support Hypothesis 2.
Discussion of Study 1
Using a quasi-field experimental design, Study 1
found that the relationship between negative feedback and creativity depends on the direction of
feedback flow. Bottom-up feedback flow was the
only case in which negative feedback increased recipient creativity; top-down and lateral feedback
flows of negative feedback were detrimental to recipient creativity. The two mechanisms—task processes and meta-processes—accounted for these
interactional relationships. In the bottom-up feedback flow condition, negative feedback increased
creativity because recipients attempted to improve
the ways of performing their creativity tasks, and
they did not feel threatened by negative feedback.
However, in the top-down and lateral feedback flow
conditions, recipients failed to generate diverse
strategies to perform their creativity tasks. Instead,

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FIGURE 2
Regression Slopes for the Interaction of Negative Feedback and the Direction of Feedback Flow on Creativity
(Study 1)
7

Employee Creativity

6
5
Bottom-up Flow

4

Top-down Flow
Lateral Flow

3
2
1
Low
Negative Feedback

High
Negative Feedback

they felt threatened by negative feedback, which in
turn decreased their creativity. Although our primary
focus was to investigate the relationship between
negative feedback and creativity, we also examined
how positive feedback relates to creativity. The result shown in Table 3 reveals that positive feedback
had a nonsignificant relationship with creativity
(b 5 20.04, SE 5 0.06, t 5 20.63, p 5 .528). We
discuss this relationship in the General Discussion.

Although the results of Study 1 supported our
hypotheses, some limitations should be noted. First,
Study 1 quasi-randomly assigned employees to the
three feedback flow conditions using the natural
field setting, and we did not manipulate negative
feedback. This raises a question of the potential influences that spurious third variables might have on
our findings. Second, we measured the recipients’
subjective impression of feedback. In the quarterly

FIGURE 3
Regression Slopes for the Interaction of Negative Feedback and the Direction of Feedback Flow on Task
Processes (Study 1)
7

Task Processes

6
5
Bottom-up Flow

4

Top-down Flow
Lateral Flow

3
2
1
Low
Negative Feedback

High
Negative Feedback

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599

FIGURE 4
Regression Slopes for the Interaction of Negative Feedback and the Direction of Feedback Flow on MetaProcesses (Study 1)
7

6

Meta-Processes

5
Bottom-up Flow

4

Top-down Flow
Lateral Flow
3

2

1
Low
Negative Feedback

performance appraisal, employees received both
numerical and written feedback. Rather than using
the numerical and written feedback directly, we
asked the employees to rate their subjective evaluation of the performance appraisal with an assumption that the same feedback could be perceived
differently by employees. For example, two employees who receive 60% in the numerical appraisal
may interpret the same number differently; one may
interpret it as negative feedback, while another may
perceive it as neutral feedback. In addition, methodologically speaking, it was difficult to quantify the
negativity of the written feedback objectively. Third,
there could be a confounding effect of feedback
recipient positions. We collected data from supervisors in the bottom-up feedback flow, but, in the topdown and lateral feedback flows, our data collection
was done with team members. Ideally, the data
should have been collected from employees at the
same position across the three conditions (e.g., middle managers who receive feedback from their followers, supervisors, and peers). This limitation is less
likely to hurt the validity of the top-down and bottomup feedback flows because those two flows presuppose positional differences between feedback givers
and recipients. However, there could be an unexpected confounding effect of position in the lateral
feedback flow. For example, the underlying psychology of middle managers receiving feedback from

High
Negative Feedback

peers could be different from that of team members
receiving feedback from peers.
To address these limitations, we conducted Study
2, in which we manipulated both negative feedback and the direction of feedback flow and randomly assigned participants to conditions in a
well-controlled laboratory environment. This experiment directly manipulates negative feedback
rather than measuring the subjective evaluation of
the feedback. Additionally, we manipulate the lateral feedback flow without disclosing the positions
of feedback giver and recipient.
STUDY 2: LABORATORY EXPERIMENT
Participants and Procedures
Three hundred and fifty-six undergraduate students at a large North American university (217
males, 136 females, three participants did not report
their gender; MAge 5 19.80, SDAge 5 1.51, four participants did not report their age) participated in this
study for one credit point. The sample was 57.02%
East Asian, 23.31% Caucasian, 8.99% South Asian,
3.37% African/African Canadian, 0.84% Hispanic,
0.28% Native American/Canadian, and 7.58%
Other. Two independent variables (feedback and the
direction of feedback flow) were manipulated in this
experiment based on a 2 (feedback: negative vs.
neutral) by 3 (the direction of feedback flow: bottom

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up vs. top down vs. lateral) experimental design. We
randomly assigned the participants to one of the six
conditions.
Upon arrival, the participants were led to a large
room where they completed a short survey regarding
their demographic information. After completing the
survey, the participants were randomly assigned to
one of three roles (i.e., supervisor, follower, or peer)
and led to four different rooms. Participants playing
the same role were grouped together and shared the
same room, except for those playing the peer role.
The peers were divided into two groups, and each
group used one room. Then, the participants were
informed that they would complete a two-round
study that would involve exchanging feedback with
another participant in a different room through an
online platform. Both rounds involved an in-basket
task, which is an idea generation task that requires
creative solutions (Shalley, 1991). In this task, participants assume the role of an employee in a company and are asked to generate creative ideas
regarding 22 organizational issues. We used one of
the 22 issues in the first round and three issues in the
second round, as explained below. The participants
were informed that they would be paired with a
partner in a different room. During the first round,
the participants individually generated one idea regarding an issue, and then they were paired with
another participant. After the pairing, the two parties
exchanged feedback regarding the counterpart’s
idea, including a numerical rating and written feedback in which they could provide additional information to qualify their rating. Subsequently, the
participants responded to the measures of task processes and meta-processes. Then, the participants
proceeded to the second round. The participants
again individually generated ideas regarding three
additional issues in the in-basket tasks, which served
as our dependent variable, exchanged their ideas,
and evaluated each other’s ideas. In reality, the participants did not have a real partner, and all feedback
provided was prepared by the experimenter, which
allowed us to manipulate the negative feedback.
Negative Feedback Manipulation
After the participants completed the first ideageneration task, they sent their idea to their partner
and received their partner’s answer to the same
question. The idea that was supposedly generated by
their partner was in fact prepared by the experimenter and was identical for all participants. The
participants were asked to offer feedback regarding

April

the level of creativity of their partner’s idea, including a percentile score and written feedback. While
the participants completed this task, they believed
that their partner also evaluated their idea and provided feedback. After completing their feedback, the
participants received their partner’s feedback regarding their own work. In reality, this feedback was
prepared by the experimenter and included the
negative feedback manipulation. The participants
received feedback in the same format they had used
to provide feedback to their partner: they received a
percentile score and additional written feedback. We
manipulated the negative feedback using the percentile score. In the negative feedback condition, we
informed the participants that their creativity was in
the bottom 20th percentile, and, in the neutral feedback condition, the participants were informed that
their creativity was average, as they were in the
40th;60th percentile. All participants received the
same written feedback, which contained advice regarding generating creative ideas. The advice included useful tips on how to increase cognitive
flexibility and cognitive persistence in creativity
tasks, which were derived from findings reported in
the creativity literature (Nijstad, De Dreu, Rietzschel,
& Baas, 2010; Shalley, 1991; see Appendix A). These
tips would likely contribute to the generation of
creative ideas if the participants were open to using
them. To ensure that the manipulation worked as
intended, we asked the participants to report how
they felt about the feedback they received on a scale
from “1” (extremely negative) to “7” (extremely
positive).
Direction of Feedback Flow Manipulation
The “direction of feedback flow” refers to the
transfer of feedback from sender(s) to recipient(s) in
which the two parties have different or the same organizational ranks. As observed above, the bottomup and top-down feedback flows are characterized
by power asymmetry between the two parties,
whereas the lateral feedback flow involves a nonhierarchical and competitive relationship between the
two parties who strive to attain limited resources.
Reflecting upon these characteristics, we manipulated the direction of feedback flow in two ways: (1)
by assigning the participants to the role of supervisor, follower, or peer, and (2) by offering different
levels of resource controls (Anderson & Berdahl,
2002; Jordan et al., 2011; Tost, Gino, & Larrick, 2013).
The role assignment manipulation has been popular
among previous researchers because evidence has

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shown that participants primed with a certain role
possess the mindset corresponding to the role and
behave accordingly (Anderson & Berdahl, 2002;
Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003). The role assignment was performed at the beginning of the experiment by randomly assigning participants to the
role of supervisor, follower, or peer. In the bottom-up
feedback flow condition, the participants were
assigned to the role of supervisor and paired with a
follower. In the top-down feedback flow condition,
the participants were assigned to the role of follower
and paired with a supervisor. In the lateral feedback
flow condition, both the participants and partners
were assigned to the role of peer without indicating
any information regarding the positions of both
parties.
To strengthen our manipulation, we also manipulated the different levels of resource controls using
a lottery system. This manipulation intended to
create the approximate experience of having social
power in the real world and a sense of competition to
attain a limited resource (e.g., Anderson & Berdahl,
2002; Jordan et al., 2011; Tost et al., 2013). The experimenter provided instructions regarding a lottery
as follows: the participants would be entered into a
lottery for nine $100 Amazon gift cards (three per
role) at the end of the semester and compete for the
lottery only with those who played the same role. In
the bottom-up feedback flow condition, we gave the
supervisors unique control over the desired reward
(i.e., chance of winning the lottery). The participants
in this condition learned that their partner’s chance
of winning the lottery would depend on how they
evaluated their partner’s creativity in the second
round. In other words, by considering the follower’s
(or partner’s) levels of creativity in the ideageneration task, the supervisor (or the participant)
could decide how many lottery tickets the follower
would receive (from 1 to 10 tickets), and each additional ticket increased the chance of winning the
lottery. Furthermore, the participants were informed
that their partner’s evaluation would not influence
their chance of winning the lottery. Instead, at the
end of the semester, the researchers would evaluate
the creativity of their ideas and determine the number of tickets they would receive. In the top-down
feedback flow condition, we provided the same instructions, but, this time, the participant–partner
relationship was the opposite, as follows: the participants played the role of follower, and their partner played the role of supervisor. Thus, the partner
could determine the number of tickets that the participants would receive, while their evaluation of the

601

partner’s creativity could not influence the partner’s
chance of winning the lottery. In the lateral feedback
flow condition, the instructions stated that the partners were at the same organizational rank, indicating
that they were peers. Therefore, the partner’s evaluation did not influence the participant’s chance of
winning the lottery and vice versa. The participants
were also informed that, at the end of the semester,
the researchers would evaluate their ideas and determine the number of tickets they would receive for
the lottery.
To ensure that the participants understood the
manipulation of the direction of feedback flow, we
employed two types of manipulation checks. First,
we asked the participants to report their and their
partners’ roles. Second, we checked the level of authority and social power each participant felt over
their partner by asking the following two questions:
(1) “Do you have authority and social power to control your partner’s chance of winning the lottery?”
and (2) “To what extent do you feel social power over
your partner?” The participants responded on a
Likert-type scale ranging from “1” (none) to “7” (a
lot). The scores of the two items of the second manipulation check scale were then averaged. Finally,
we used the same “indicator” coding scheme as was
used in Study 1 to analyze the direction of feedback
flow: the bottom-up feedback flow was coded as
D1 5 0 and D2 5 0; the top-down feedback flow was
coded as D1 5 1 and D2 5 0; and the lateral feedback
flow was coded as D1 5 0 and D2 5 1.
Task processes and meta-processes. Task processes (a 5 .96) and meta-processes (a 5 .96) were
measured by the same scales that were used in
Study 1. The participants rated the two scales between the first and second rounds of their idea
generation and evaluation tasks. All items are listed
in Appendix A. The participants reported the extent
to which they agreed with the items on a 7-point
scale ranging from “1” (not at all) to “7” (very much).
Creativity. The three ideas generated in the second round of the idea generation and evaluation
tasks served as our dependent variable: recipient
creativity. Two independent judges were trained to
evaluate the extent to which the three ideas were
creative using a scale ranging from “1” (not at all
creative) to “7” (very creative). The judges showed
substantial agreement in the evaluation of the levels
of creativity of the ideas: ICC 1 5 .80 (p , .001) and
ICC 2 5 .89, (p , .001). Thus, the final creativity
scores were obtained by averaging the scores of the
two judges on each idea and then averaging the
scores of the three ideas.

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Results of Study 2
Feedback manipulation check. A 2 (feedback:
negative vs. neutral) by 3 (direction of feedback flow:
bottom up vs. top down vs. lateral) analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the feedback manipulation
check item as the dependent variable showed a significant main effect of the feedback condition. The
participants who received negative feedback reported that the feedback they received was more
negative (M 5 3.34, SD 5 1.85) than those who received the neutral feedback (M 5 4.20, SD 5 1.38),
F(1, 350) 5 27.71, p , .001, hp2 5 .07. Thus, our
feedback manipulation was successful.
Direction of feedback flow manipulation check.
We checked this manipulation in two ways, as previously described. First, we checked whether the
participants accurately identified their and their
partners’ roles. Three hundred and forty-nine of the
356 participants (98.03%) accurately identified the
roles. Second, we conducted a 2 (feedback: negative
vs. neutral) by 3 (direction of feedback flow: bottom
up vs. top down vs. lateral) ANOVA with the manipulation check scale as the dependent variable.
The results showed that the participants in the
bottom-up feedback flow condition reported it
higher (M 5 6.32, SD 5 1.21) than those in the lateral
feedback flow condition (M 5 2.01, SD 5 2.02) and
those in the top-down feedback flow condition (M 5
1.88, SD 5 1.55), F(2, 350) 5 298.93, p , .001, hp2 5
.63. The participants in the lateral feedback flow
condition and top-down feedback flow condition did
not differ, t(231) 5 0.54, p 5 .587. Thus, our manipulation was successful.
Hypothesis testing. The means, standard deviations, and correlations of all variables in Study 2 are
presented in Table 4. To test our first hypothesis, we
created two dummy variables for the direction of
feedback flow, following the same procedure used in
Study 1, and performed a regression analysis.

April

Hypothesis 1 predicted that, in the bottom-up
feedback flow condition, the effect of negative feedback on recipient creativity would be positive,
whereas, in the top-down and lateral feedback flow
conditions, the effect would be negative. The results
showed that the interaction between the feedback
condition (neutral 5 0, negative 5 1) and D1 was
significant (bottom up 5 0, top down 5 1; b 5 21.55,
SE 5 0.30, t 5 25.15, p , .001; see Table 5), as was
the interaction between the feedback condition and
D2 (bottom up 5 0, lateral 5 1; b 5 22.08, SE 5 0.32,
t 5 26.48, p , .001; see Table 5). The former interaction indicates that there is a significant slope difference between the bottom-up and top-down
feedback flow conditions; the latter interaction
shows a significant slope difference between the
bottom-up and lateral feedback flow conditions.
Furthermore, we conducted simple slope tests at
each value (0 or 1) of each moderator (D1 and D2) and
found that negative feedback (vs. neutral feedback)
led to higher levels of recipient creativity in the
bottom-up feedback flow condition (MNeutral 5 3.56,
SDNeutral 5 1.07; MNegative 5 4.52, SDNegative 5 1.47;
b 5 0.96, SE 5 0.22, t 5 4.45, p , .001, LLCI 5 0.536,
ULCI 5 1.385). However, negative feedback led to
lower levels of creativity in the top-down feedback
flow condition (MNeutral 5 3.77, SDNeutral 5 1.11;
MNegative 5 3.19, SDNegative 5 1.04; b 5 20.59, SE 5
0.21, t 5 22.81, p 5 .005, LLCI 5 20.995,
ULCI 5 20.176) and lateral feedback flow condition
(MNeutral 5 4.34, SDNeutral 5 1.40; MNegative 5 3.22,
SDNegative 5 .94; b 5 21.12, SE 5 0.24, t 5 24.71, p ,
.001, LLCI 5 21.589, ULCI 5 20.652). These relationships are depicted in Figure 5. Thus, Hypothesis
1 is supported.
Hypothesis 2 stated that the interactional effects
between negative feedback and direction of feedback
flow on recipient creativity are mediated by task
processes and meta-processes. Before we tested the

TABLE 4
Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations of Variables in Study 2

1
2
3
4
5
6

Variables

M

SD

1

2

3

4

5

D1 (bottom up 5 0; top down 5 1)
D2 (bottom up 5 0; lateral 5 1)
Negative Feedback
Task Processes
Meta-Processes
Creativity

0.37
0.28
0.50
4.88
3.61
3.79

0.48
0.45
0.50
1.65
1.82
1.29

2.48**
2.03
2.05
.03
2.17**

2.28
2.11*
.02
.01

2.04
.16**
2.07

2.32**
.53**

2.43**

Notes: n 5 356. Negative Feedback (neutral feedback 5 0, negative feedback 5 1).
*p , .05
**p , .01 (all tests two-tailed)

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TABLE 5
Multiple Hierarchical Regression on Creativity, Task Processes, and Meta-Processes in Study 2
Creativity

Task Processes

Meta-Processes

Model 1

Model 2

Model 1

Model 2

Model 1

Model 2

Variables

b (SE)

b (SE)

b (SE)

b (SE)

b (SE)

b (SE)

Negative Feedback
D1 (bottom up 5 0; top down 5 1)
D2 (bottom up 5 0; lateral 5 1)
Negative Feedback 3 D1
Negative Feedback 3 D2
F
DF
R2
DR2

20.20 (0.14)
20.60 (0.16)**
20.28 (0.17)†

0.96 (0.22)**
0.21 (0.21)
0.78 (0.23)**
21.55 (0.30)**
22.08 (0.32)**
13.04**
23.62**
.16
.11

20.17 (0.17)
20.46 (0.21)*
20.64 (0.22)**

0.82 (0.29)**
0.29 (0.29)
0.18 (0.30)
21.46 (0.40)**
21.61 (0.43)**
5.82**
9.20**
.08
.05

0.60 (0.19)**
0.22 (0.23)
0.23 (0.24)

20.04 (0.32)
20.25 (0.32)
20.31 (0.34)
0.90 (0.45)*
1.06 (0.48)*
3.38**
3.00†
.05
.02

5.31**
5.31**
.04
.04

3.40*
3.40*
.03
.03

3.60*
3.60*
.03
.03

Notes: n 5 356. Negative Feedback (0 5 neutral feedback; 1 5 negative feedback).
†
p , .10
*p , .05
**p , .01 (all tests two-tailed)

full moderated mediation model, we tested the interactions between negative feedback and direction
of feedback flow in predicting task processes and
meta-processes. In predicting task processes, the
interactions between the feedback condition and D1
(b 5 21.46, SE 5 0.40, t 5 23.64, p , .001) and
between the feedback condition and D2 (b 5 21.61,
SE 5 0.43, t 5 23.75, p , .001) were significant (see
Table 5). Specifically, the results of the simple slope
tests showed that, in the bottom-up feedback flow

condition, negative feedback led to greater attention
to task processes (MNeutral 5 4.79, SDNeutral 5 1.50;
MNegative 5 5.61, SDNegative 5 1.46; b 5 0.82, SE 5
0.29, t 5 2.86, p 5 .005, LLCI 5 0.257, ULCI 5 1.392).
However, negative feedback reduced the participants’ attention to task processes in both the topdown feedback flow condition (MNeutral 5 5.08,
SDNeutral 5 1.27; MNegative 5 4.45, SDNegative 5 1.71;
b 5 20.63, SE 5 0.28, t 5 22.28, p 5 .023,
LLCI 5 21.182, ULCI 5 20.088) and lateral feedback

FIGURE 5
Regression Slopes for the Interaction of Negative Feedback and the Direction of Feedback Flow on Recipient
Creativity (Study 2)
7

Recipient Creativity

6

5
Bottom-up Flow
4

Top-down Flow
Lateral Flow

3

2

1
Neutral Feedback

Negative Feedback

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FIGURE 6
Regression Slopes for the Interaction of Negative Feedback and the Direction of Feedback Flow on Task
Processes (Study 2)
7

Task Processes

6

5
Bottom-up Flow
4

Top-down Flow
Lateral Flow

3

2

1
Neutral Feedback

Negative Feedback

flow condition (M Neutral 5 4.97, SD Neutral 5 1.89;
M Negative 5 4.19, SD Negative 5 1.79; b 5 20.78,
SE 5 0.32, t 5 22.47, p 5 .014, LLCI 5 21.410,
ULCI 5 20.159). These effects are depicted in
Figure 6.
In predicting meta-processes, the interactions
between the feedback condition and D1 (b 5 0.90,
SE 5 0.45, t 5 2.01, p 5 .045) and between the
feedback condition and D2 (b 5 1.06, SE 5 0.48, t 5
2.20, p 5 .029) were significant (see Table 5).6 The
simple slope tests showed that negative feedback
did not influence attention to meta-processes in the
bottom-up feedback flow condition (MNeutral 5 3.50,
SDNeutral 5 1.61; MNegative 5 3.47, SDNegative 5 1.53;
b 5 20.04, SE 5 0.32, t 5 20.11, p 5 .914,
LLCI 5 20.672, ULCI 5 0.601). However, negative
feedback directed the participants’ attention to metaprocesses in the top-down feedback flow condition
(MNeutral 5 3.26, SDNeutral 5 1.49; MNegative 5 4.12,
SDNegative 5 1.80; b 5 0.87, SE 5 0.31, t 5 2.79, p 5
.006, LLCI 5 0.255, ULCI 5 1.482) and lateral feedback flow condition (MNeutral 5 3.19, SDNeutral 5 1.77;
MNegative 5 4.21, SDNegative 5 2.56; b 5 1.02, SE 5 0.36,
t 5 2.87, p 5 .004, LLCI 5 0.322, ULCI 5 1.725). These
effects are depicted in Figure 7.
Finally, to test the full moderated mediation
model, we used Hayes’s (2013) PROCESS macro
In the F test of overall significance, the DF of these
interactions was marginally significant, p 5 .051 (see
Table 5).
6

with 10,000 bias-corrected bootstrapping resamples.
In the bottom-up feedback flow condition, consistent
with the results of Study 1, the positive effect of
negative feedback on recipient creativity was mediated by task processes (estimated size of the indirect
effect 5 .28, SE 5 0.10, LLCI 5 0.093, ULCI 5 0.484)
but not by meta-processes (estimated size of the
indirect effect 5 0.01, SE 5 0.06, LLCI 5 20.104,
ULCI 5 0.128). In the top-down feedback flow condition, the negative effect of negative feedback on
creativity was mediated by both task processes (estimated size of the indirect effect 5 20.22, SE 5 0.10,
LLCI 5 20.421, ULCI 5 20.039) and meta-processes
(estimated size of the indirect effect 5 20.18, SE 5
0.07, LLCI 5 20.336, ULCI 5 20.066). In the lateral
feedback flow condition, the negative effect of negative feedback on creativity was also mediated by both
task processes (estimated size of the indirect
effect 5 20.27, SE 5 0.13, LLCI 5 20.545,
ULCI 5 20.026) and meta-processes (estimated
size of the indirect effect 5 20.21, SE 5 0.10,
LLCI 5 20.427, ULCI 5 20.040). Thus, the results
supported Hypothesis 2.
Discussion of Study 2
In the laboratory experiment, we again found that
the direction of feedback flow moderates the relationship between negative feedback and recipient creativity. Specifically, negative feedback
increased recipient creativity when the feedback

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FIGURE 7
Regression Slopes for the Interaction of Negative Feedback and the Direction of Feedback Flow on MetaProcesses (Study 2)
7

6

Meta-Processes

5
Bottom-up Flow
4

Top-down Flow
Lateral Flow

3

2

1
Neutral Feedback

Negative Feedback

flowed upward, but negative feedback reduced
recipient creativity when the feedback flowed
downward or laterally. We also found support for
the hypothesized mediating roles of task processes and meta-processes, replicating the findings from Study 1. Study 2 demonstrates causality
by manipulating both negative feedback and the
direction of feedback flow and randomly assigning participants into one of the six conditions in a
controlled laboratory environment.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The main objective of our research was to resolve the theoretical and empirical inconsistency in
the relationship between negative feedback and recipient creativity. The results of our studies—one
quasi-field experiment and one fully randomized
laboratory experiment—demonstrate that this inconsistency can be resolved by considering the direction of feedback flow. We found that bottom-up
negative feedback (which flows from followers to a
supervisor) enabled recipients to utilize the feedback
by directing their focus to task processes rather than to
meta-processes, and their creativity was enhanced as a
result. In contrast, top-down negative feedback (which
flows from a supervisor to a follower) and lateral negative feedback (which flows from peers to peers) directed recipients’ focus away from task processes and
toward meta-processes, which hindered creativity. By

investigating our theoretical model in the field and in
the laboratory, we were able to establish both the
generalizability and causality of the hypothesized
relationships.
Theoretical and Managerial Contributions
Our research contributes to the creativity and feedback literature by integrating contradictory findings
regarding the relationship between negative feedback
and creativity into a coherent theoretical model.
Through our comprehensive review of the literature,
we were able to categorize the past findings into two
groups based on their theoretical commonalities. The
first group (e.g., Fang et al., 2014; Ford & Gioia,
2000; Vuori & Huy, 2015) relied on theories emphasizing the fact that negative feedback identifies
the creativity–standard gap, which creates dissatisfaction with current creativity and encourages
feedback recipients to close the gap by generating
better task strategies for their creativity tasks. The
second group (e.g., Van Dijk & Kluger, 2011; Zhou,
1998) argued that negative feedback elicits feelings
of insecurity or threat and diverts attention away
from creativity tasks, resulting in reduced creativity. By theorizing the two essential mechanisms—
task processes and meta-processes—underlying
the relationship between negative feedback and recipient creativity (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996), our research provides a comprehensive, parsimonious

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theoretical framework that incorporates these two
contradictory perspectives.
Our research not only develops a coherent theoretical model for organizing the conflicting findings
in the literature but also seeks to resolve the inconsistency by introducing a novel concept: the direction of feedback flow. Past research has examined
negative feedback and recipient creativity with little
understanding of how the social contexts surrounding this relationship play a role. Zhou (2008: 130)
identified the limitation of the extant feedback research as follows:
How effectively we can use feedback in promoting
creativity depends on the nature and components of
the feedback itself, on the characteristics of the feedback recipient, and on the characteristics of the
feedback giver.

Addressing this limitation, our research highlights
the importance of conceptualizing feedback as a flow
that occurs between two (or more) social actors. By
investigating feedback flows, we could identify the
feedback senders and recipients and examine their
social hierarchical relationships, which are all essential for understanding the effect of negative
feedback on creativity. Using this novel concept, we
were able to investigate the question of how the dynamics of the hierarchical relationship between
feedback senders and recipients might resolve the
inconsistent association between negative feedback
and recipient creativity. We believe that feedback
researchers will benefit by considering the direction
of feedback flow in their research.
The investigation of the direction of feedback flow
also extends feedback intervention theory (Kluger &
DeNisi, 1996). To the best of our knowledge, empirical studies directly testing the two psychological
processes of feedback intervention theory (i.e., task
processes and meta-processes) are lacking in the
current literature. Because the key value of this theory is that it proposes two contradictory processes
that transmit the opposite effects of negative feedback on employee behavior and outcomes, the lack of
empirical tests of the two processes could undermine its usefulness. Our research, conducted in both
a professional organization and a laboratory setting,
provides empirical evidence supporting the validity
of these two psychological processes. By doing so,
we help future researchers confidently utilize feedback intervention theory. In addition, our research
adds the direction of feedback flow to feedback intervention theory as a critical boundary condition within which the theory operates. Despite its

April

parsimonious theoretical framework organizing the
contradicting influences of negative feedback on
organizational outcomes, this theory does not offer
insights into boundary conditions in which a recipient responds to negative feedback by attending to
either task processes or meta-processes. Given the
prevalence of negative feedback in organizations
(Zenger & Folkman, 2017) and its potential for both
benefiting and hampering employee outcomes,
feedback intervention theory can increase its usefulness and value by offering insights about when
organizations can reap benefits from negative feedback. Our research provides an initial investigation
into an important, albeit largely neglected, boundary
condition: the direction of feedback flow. We believe
that our findings could benefit future researchers
who utilize feedback intervention theory by emphasizing the importance of considering the direction of feedback flow in their research.
Our research also emphasizes the theoretical value
of separating negative feedback from positive feedback. Some past works have investigated both positive and negative feedback simultaneously and
treated the two as opposite ends of a single continuum. However, in real organizations, the assumption that negative and positive feedback are on the
same continuum may be problematic. Considering
that a job comprises a set of many different tasks in
organizations (Morgeson, Garza, & Campion, 2012),
a feedback sender may simultaneously provide a
feedback recipient with negative feedback on some
tasks and positive feedback on other tasks. Even
within one task, some behaviors may receive positive feedback, while other behaviors may be the
targets of criticism. Therefore, positive and negative
feedback can be simultaneously high and low; thus,
the single-continuum assumption may not successfully reflect the setting in real organizations.
Supporting this, Table 2 shows only a weak negative
correlation between the two (r 5 2.26, p , .01). In
addition, our confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that these constructs differed. We hope future
scholars will build separate theoretical frameworks
for negative feedback and positive feedback and
measure the two independently.
Our research also has implications for practitioners. First, it is important to emphasize that
bottom-up negative feedback creates an opportunity
for increasing recipient creativity. In organizations,
followers tend to have low motivation to send criticism and negative feedback to their supervisors because such feedback may be considered a challenge
against people who have formal authority and social

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power over important organizational resources (Brett
& Atwater, 2001; DeNisi & Kluger, 2000; London &
Beatty, 1993). In contrast to such a notion, our research revealed that supervisors tend to not take
negative feedback personally. Instead, supervisors
pay heightened attention to addressing the problems
indicated by the bottom-up negative feedback in order to improve their behavior. Therefore, organizations should consider instituting formal processes
that encourage followers to provide thoughtful, critical feedback to their superiors. We believe that the
evaluation system used by the company in Study 1
can encourage bottom-up negative feedback. This
company provided formal opportunities (i.e., the
quarterly evaluations) for followers to provide negative feedback to their supervisors. Even though the
quarterly evaluations were not anonymous and the
bottom-up feedback was used only for informative
and developmental purposes, the followers actively
utilized such formal opportunities to offer negative
feedback to their supervisors in both numerical and
written forms.
Our research also demonstrated that the top-down
and lateral negative feedback flows reduce recipient
creativity because they direct recipients’ attention to
meta-processes and away from task processes.
However, this conclusion does not imply that organizations should prohibit supervisors from giving
negative feedback to their followers or that peers
should avoid giving negative feedback to one another. Instead, supervisors and peers might want to
limit the flow of negative feedback in the middle of
creativity tasks, as it decreases recipient creativity.
Perhaps negative feedback can be offered after creativity tasks have been completed so that the recipients can take time to cope with their threatened
mindset and think about the ways in which they can
improve their current creativity. This suggestion is in
line with the findings in the brainstorming literature
that participants should not criticize one another’s
ideas during group idea generation but should focus
only on generating as many diverse ideas as possible
(Esser, 1998). Another way of increasing receptivity
of feedback recipients in the top-down and lateral
feedback flows could be that organizations offer
several follow-up sessions to employees. Brett and
Atwater (2001: 940) suggested that “executive
coaches or multiple follow-up sessions may help
those receiving negative or discrepant feedback to
deal with negative reactions and work through
them.” Through multiple follow-up sessions, feedback recipients may have a deeper understanding of
their current creativity and evaluation standards,

607

which could help them to focus more on ways of
addressing the creativity–standard gap instead of
attending to meta-processes.
Finally, our theory suggests that competition
might be the main cause of feedback recipients attending to meta-processes when they receive negative feedback from peers (i.e., lateral feedback flow).
Competition is inevitable between peers because
social hierarchies in organizations often resemble a
pyramid with peers competing for limited resources
(Bandura, 1977; Festinger, 1962; O’Keeffe et al.,
1984). The sense of competition makes peers negatively react to lateral negative feedback by having
them attend to meta-processes. It is then possible that
carefully crafted negative feedback that does not remind of competition between peers could enhance
peers’ receptivity to lateral negative feedback. One
possible way to achieve this goal is that peers may
need to use temporal feedback instead of using social
comparison feedback when they provide negative
feedback to other peers. “Temporal feedback” compares past performance with current performance
within one employee, whereas “social comparison
feedback” compares performance between employees. Feedback researchers have shown that social comparison feedback is the most prevalent type
of feedback in organizations, and it increases a sense
of competition (Brown, Cron, & Slocum, 1998). Although empirical evidence concerning temporal
feedback is lacking in the literature, one group of
researchers recently showed that people tend to be
more receptive to temporal feedback than social
comparison feedback (Chun, Brockner, & De Cremer,
2018) because such feedback can reduce the sense of
competition. Thus, organizations, such as the company in Study 1, may need to consider asking employees to use temporal feedback in their quarterly
performance appraisal of peers.
Limitations and Future Research
As with any research, the current research has
limitations that can be fruitfully addressed by future
research. First, national cultures might have influenced our findings. Study 1 was conducted in Korea,
where cultures of shame and power distance are salient (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta,
2004). In Korean culture, recipients of negative
feedback may feel shameful and believe that feedback senders intended to humiliate them. This cultural background might have made the Korean
employees in Study 1 more likely to attend to metaprocesses rather than to task processes when they

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received negative feedback, particularly in the topdown and lateral feedback flows. In addition, a high
power distance might influence supervisors’ attention to task processes in the bottom-up feedback
flow, because, in a high power-distance culture, both
supervisors and followers are unlikely to believe that
followers can threaten supervisors. Thus, rather than
interpreting negative feedback as a threat to themselves, supervisors might be able to increase their
focus on task processes. Nevertheless, we believe
that such cultural influences are unlikely because
Study 2 replicated the same findings in a North
American cultural context. However, the sample of
Study 2 was undergraduate students, which lowers
the external validity of our findings. Therefore, we
call for future research to investigate our model with
a sample of employees in other cultural contexts.
Our findings showed that the only feedback flow
that benefits recipient creativity is the bottom-up
feedback flow. However, it is possible that supervisors may also take bottom-up negative feedback
personally and be upset by it when their power is
unstable or illegitimate (e.g., new leaders who have
recently joined). Research has shown that, when
power holders perceive that their power is unstable,
they become anxious about others’ evaluations,
more vigilant to potential threats to their power,
and motivated to protect their power (Lammers,
Galinsky, Gordijn, & Otten, 2008). Thus, in situations
in which supervisors perceive their power as unstable and illegitimate, negative feedback from followers may decrease their creativity because they
may feel threatened by negative feedback (metaprocesses), and their task focus may be significantly
distracted by such feedback (task processes). Thus,
future research could explore situations where
bottom-up negative feedback hampers supervisor
creativity.
Another limitation of our research is that we investigated only the effects of negative feedback.
Whether positive feedback positively or negatively
influences creativity remains an open question. Our
review of past research on positive feedback and
creativity revealed inconsistencies in the literature:
researchers have found positive (e.g., Hon, Chan, &
Lu, 2013; Van Dijk & Kluger, 2011) or null (e.g., Fodor
& Carver, 2000) relationships between positive
feedback and creativity. This inconsistency could be
explained by completely different mechanisms from
ours (task processes and meta-processes). For example, positive feedback may either increase or decrease task motivation, which tends to have a
positive relationship with creativity. On the one

April

hand, positive feedback may increase task motivation because such recognition likely encourages recipients to put more effort into their tasks (Amabile,
Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996). On the other
hand, as positive feedback highlights the sufficiency
of recipients’ current behavior, it may provide a
sense of satisfaction with their current behavior,
which can reduce task motivation (Locke & Latham,
2002). Addressing this inconsistency was beyond
the scope of our research. It would be worthwhile for
future researchers to shed further light on the relationship between positive feedback and creativity.
The focus of this research was limited to creativity
as an outcome of negative feedback. Thus, we did
not investigate another important organizational
outcome, “routine performance,” which refers to
employee accomplishment on well-learned and frequently practiced tasks (Kilduff, 1993; March, 1991).
Researchers have suggested that routine performance (or exploitation) and creativity (or exploration) are different, independent dimensions of job
performance (Cyert & March, 1963; March & Simon,
1958). According to our review, our theoretical
model is less likely to be applicable to routine performance. In particular, we believe that task processes in our model could be unrelated or even
negatively related to routine performance. By definition, task processes refer to processes whereby
employees attempt to generate different, diverse, and
novel strategies for their tasks. Such experimentation with task strategies could be detrimental to
routine performance because routine performance
requires that employees strictly follow existing ways
of doing their jobs (i.e., task routine; Cyert & March,
1963; March & Simon, 1958). Therefore, even in the
case in which negative feedback increases recipient
attention to task processes (e.g., bottom-up feedback
flow), we are not certain whether negative feedback
is beneficial for routine performance. As the main
purpose of our research was to resolve the inconsistency between negative feedback and creativity, the
examination of routine performance was beyond our
research scope. Thus, we call for future research on
this topic.
Finally, our research investigated only unsought
negative feedback. It is possible that sought negative
feedback, or negative feedback that follows feedback
seeking, may have completely different effects on
recipient creativity. Feedback seeking is a type of
proactive behavior that often represents the readiness to receive criticism and negative feedback and
the willingness to correct behaviors accordingly
(Ashford, 1986; Ashford, Blatt, & VandeWalle, 2003;

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Ashford & Tsui, 1991). Therefore, negative feedback
that follows feedback seeking should be beneficial
for constructive changes in task behaviors and creativity; negative feedback indicates the shortcomings
of one’s creativity, and feedback seekers are ready to
admit and correct their shortcomings. We believe
this is a promising research area to which future researchers may be able to contribute.
Notwithstanding these limitations, this paper
deepens our understanding of the relationship between negative feedback and recipient creativity. By
proposing a comprehensive theoretical framework
that incorporates inconsistent theories and empirical findings in past research, our research contributes to the creativity and feedback literature. Across
two studies, we show that the effects of negative
feedback on recipient creativity depend on the direction of feedback flow. We hope to motivate future
researchers to explore the differential effects of
feedback on creativity by considering top-down,
bottom-up, and lateral feedback flows.

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April

(3) This feedback made me wonder whether there
were different approaches I could use to do better
on my tasks.
(4) This feedback made me improve the processes
involved in completing my tasks.

Meta-Processes
Yeun Joon Kim (y.kim@jbs.cam.ac.uk) is assistant professor of organizational behavior at Judge Business School,
University of Cambridge. He received his PhD from the
University of Toronto, his MS and BA from Seoul National
University, and another BA from Yonsei University. His
research interests include creativity, leadership, and
culture.
Junha Kim (kim.7333@osu.edu) is a doctoral student in
marketing at Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University. He received his BA and MS from KAIST. His research interests generally focus on consumer judgment
and decision-making.

Note: “reference” 5 supervisor/peers/followers.
(1) This feedback made me care about how I present
myself to my [reference].
(2) This feedback made me be more self-conscious
about the way I look to my [reference].
(3) This feedback made me worry about the impression my [reference] has of me.
(4) This feedback made me think about how my
[reference] might perceive me.
(5) This feedback made me concerned about how my
[reference] evaluates my abilities or weaknesses.

Feedback Text Used in Study 2
APPENDIX A
Negative (Positive) Feedback
Note: “reference” 5 supervisor/peers/followers.
(1) In the performance appraisal, [reference] told me
that I didn’t (did) do a good job.
(2) In the performance appraisal, [reference] criticized (praised) my work.
(3) In the performance appraisal, [reference] gave
me negative (positive) feedback.
(4) In the performance appraisal, [reference] told me
that my performance is not (is) up to the
standard.
(5) In the performance appraisal, [reference] told me
that my performance is poor (excellent).
(6) In the performance appraisal, [reference] indicated
that [reference] is not (is) happy with my work.
(7) In the performance appraisal, [reference] gave
me many criticisms (compliments).

Task Processes
(1) This feedback helped me pay more attention to
how I conduct my tasks.
(2) This feedback helped me think about strategies
that I could use to improve my task performance.

Note: In this text, grammatical errors were
intended.
“I am actually just finishing reading a book about
creativity and it gave some good advice. If you want to
think ‘outside the box,’ you may want to think about
broad categories first, rather than focusing on detailed
ideas. For example, on the coffee break topic you may
start thinking w ideas related to at least three broad
categories (e.g., employees, HR system, or supervisors).
Then focus on one category & generate ideas within that
category. For example: for the HR system, think about
some rules/regulations that prevent the problem. If
you cannot come up with creative ideas within the
category, you can go on to the next category.
“Another thing they said is that good ideas
sometimes combining two or more categories. E.g.:
initiate a contest where employees generate ideas
about effective HR regulations to solve the problem. This provides an opportunity that employees
think about their behaviors as well as HR policy for
preventing such behaviors. (This would be related
to both employee and HR system categories.)
“The book also talks about the importance of persistence I mentioned that you can jump into other categories when you feel you cannot generate creative
ideas within a certain category, please do not give up too
easily. Sometimes, you can suddenly come up with
good ideas when you put more efforts within the
category.”

