Feedback-Driven Time Segmenting : The Effect of Feedback Frequency on Employee Behavior

Advances in technology have made it possible for employers to provide performance feedback to employees on a more frequent basis. Using four experiments I provide evidence that feedback frequency alters the way employees break up or segment their work time—a process that I refer to as feedback-driven time segmenting. Specifically, the experiments demonstrate that more (less) frequent feedback leads employees to create smaller (larger) mental time segments. In addition to providing evidence of its existence, these experiments demonstrate how feedback-driven time segmenting can affect employee behavior. Specifically, the results indicate that employees who receive more frequent feedback find fewer task efficiencies than employees who receive less frequent feedback. However, employees who receive more frequent feedback work more intensely, if less efficiently, than employees who receive less frequent feedback. Together, these experiments provide evidence that the economically meaningless time segments employees create can significantly influence their behavior