Using 456 supervisor-employee dyads from four organizations, this study examined how employees use one proactive behavior, feedback seeking, as a strategy to enhance their creative performance. As hypothesized, employees' cognitive style and perceived organizational support for creativity affected two patterns of feedback seeking: the propensity to inquire for feedback and the propensity to monitor the environment for indirect feedback. Feedback inquiry related to supervisor ratings of employee creative performance. These results highlight the importance of employees' self-regulatory behaviors in the creative process and show that feedback seeking is not only a strategy that facilitates individual adaptation, but also a resource for achieving creative outcomes.

In 1983, our understanding of feedback in organizations shifted from a focus on feedback from supervisors through the annual performance review to consider also the feedback information proactively sought by individuals as part of their everyday interactions within organizations ( Ashford & Cummings 1983 ). This article updates our understanding of the field of feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) since this literature was last reviewed in 2003, analyzes its current state, and suggests future research ideas. We begin by positioning feedback seeking within a broader theoretical context by relating it to proactivity, impression management, and individual adjustment. We then review what we currently know about who is more likely to seek feedback, as well as the contexts that stimulate such seeking. We then review the benefits and potential costs that might accompany feedback seeking, with regard to the person who is seeking it as well as the group. We conclude this review by identifying potentially fruitful avenues for further research and some key practical implications.

This study invokes a process view on employee creativity to uncover how the different stages of the creative process are associated with different antecedents. Specifically, we explore the role of five previously identified antecedents of organizational creativity in the different phases of the creative process within organizations: (1) personality; (2) rewards; (3) the role of co‐workers; (4) leadership; and (5) organizational resources. In an analysis of 22 case studies we found that antecedents of creativity indeed have different roles in different stages of the creative process and that antecedents that are helpful in one stage of the creative process, can be detrimental for another stage. Such results highlight the importance of conceptualizing creativity as a process, rather than as an outcome variable.

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Summary We explore how the impact of seeking feedback from different sources (i.e., feedback source variety) on employee creativity is shaped by perceptions of the work environment. Specifically, we argue that two contextual factors, namely, performance dynamism (Study 1) and creative time pressure (Study 2), moderate the relationship between feedback source variety and creativity such that under conditions of high performance dynamism and low creative time pressure, individuals benefit from diverse feedback information. In Study 1 (N = 1,031), the results showed that under conditions of high performance dynamism, the relationship between feedback source variety and self‐reported creativity was nonlinear, with employee creativity exponentially increasing as a function of feedback source variety. Similarly, in Study 2 (N = 181), we found that under conditions of low creative time pressure, the relationship between feedback source variety and employee creativity was nonlinear, with supervisor‐rated creative performance exponentially increasing at higher levels of feedback source variety. Such results highlight that the relationship between feedback source variety and creative performance is affected by the perceptions of the work environment in which feedback is sought.

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Humble leadership is attracting increased scholarly attention, but little is known about its effects when used in conjunction with less humble leadership behaviors that rely on a perception of the leader as confident and charismatic. This study contrasts the effects on top management team (TMT) potency and organizational performance of a more humble (feedback seeking) and a less humble (vision) CEO leader behavior. We hypothesize that CEO feedback seeking increases TMT potency and firm performance by communicating to TMT members that the organization values their input and encouraging their own feedback seeking, whereas CEO vision articulation influences these outcomes by fostering greater clarity about the firm's direction, and an enhanced ability to coordinate efforts within the TMT. CEOs who have not developed a vision can achieve a similar positive impact on TMT potency and firm performance by seeking feedback. In a sample of CEOs and TMT members from 65 firms, both CEO feedback seeking and vision articulation exhibit positive direct relationships with firm performance. However, only feedback seeking displays an indirect effect on performance via TMT potency. Finally, CEO feedback seeking has its strongest effects on firm performance and TMT potency for CEOs who are not seen as having a vision.

This paper investigates image cost as a potential downside of proactivity. Drawing on attribution theory, we examine how people construct subjective evaluations of one manifestation of proactivity, feedback-seeking behaviour. Using a scenario methodology, we examined how employees' performance history, their manager's implicit person theory (IPT), and the frequency of their feedback-seeking affect how managers evaluate employees' feedback seeking. Results indicate that manager attribute average performers' feedback seeking significantly less to performance-enhancement motives than superior performers' seeking. Results further show that the frequency of feedback seeking and a manager's IPT interact in influencing managers' attributions for feedback seeking, with more entity oriented managers attributing frequent feedback seeking significantly more to impression-management motives than infrequent feedback requests. These results highlight the importance of not only the instrumental benefits of employee proactivity, but also its potential costs.