Peer feedback-seeking : importance of feedback environment referents and individual cultural values

Over the past decade, researchers and practitioners alike have increasingly considered the feedback environment, or the social context in which feedback exchanges occur. Along with this, researchers have called for empirical work assessing models of feedback-seeking processes that carefully consider the distinct influence of feedback source. Extant research indicates that employees consider both supervisors and organizational peers when basing perceptions of contextual influences on feedback-seeking behavior. Using responses from employees in the finance sector in Peru, our results explore the relative importance of feedback environment referents (peer, supervisor) in predicting feedback seeking in the matching referent. Our findings build on previous research that identifies feedback orientation - trait receptivity to feedback – as an essential individual difference to consider in the feedback-seeking process. Further, our findings support the notion that assessing power distance cultural values at the individual level is both meaningful and useful for understanding psychological processes. Finally, results indicate our understanding of the relationship between feedback-seeking behavior and performance may be strengthened when jointly considering seeking behaviors towards both peers and supervisors