More and more employees request feedback from their organizations to develop and learn. This is reflected by a growing number of digital feedback apps which facilitate high-frequency feedback exchange. However, the effect of feedback has hardly been studied on an organizational level due to complexity. Therefore, we strive to analyze organizational feedback exchange with an agent-based simulation model. Concretely, we study the effect of feedback length and feedback frequency on the organizational return on investment (ROI) of feedback exchange. Our study shows that feedback length stays in an inverted U-shape relationship with ROI. Contrarily, feedback frequency is negatively correlated with ROI. When analyzed jointly, two sweet spots arise: one for medium-length, frequent feedback, and the other, for longer infrequent feedback.

Sacha Fuchs, Roman Rietsche, Stephan Aier, Michael Rivera

2021