Reacting to criticism: What motivates top leaders to respond substantively to negative social performance feedback?

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Journal of Business Research

Publication Date

1-1-2025

Abstract

The responses of organizations in situations of negative feedback from stakeholders are attracting increasing scholarly and societal attention. The literature has so far largely focused on situational factors that direct such responses, while calling for a more acute examination of individual factors. Anchored in Stakeholder Theory and Trait Activation Theory, this study examines how and to what extent prosocial motivation (a normative-oriented trait) and fear of failure (an instrumental-oriented trait) determine organizational leaders’ substantive responses to negative social performance feedback. We test our predictions on two waves of original survey data, including a conjoint experiment, on a sample of leaders of young organizations. Our findings contribute to literature and practice related to organizational responses to social performance feedback.

ISSN

0148-2963

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Volume

186

Disciplines

Business

Keywords

Feedback, Social performance, Stakeholder theory, Substantive response, Trait activation theory

Scopus ID

85205701151

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Hybrid: This publication is openly available in a subscription-based journal/series

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