PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK INFORMATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION: EVIDENCE OF CONCEPTUAL CONVERGENCE

This study investigates the degree to which performance feedback information can be conceptually housed within an existing theoretical framework of organizational communication. If one's job can be conceptualized as a work information environment, then logically there should be some communality between organizational communication and performance feedback information. In this study 213 faculty members at Iowa State University completed a questionnaire addressing patterns of organizational communication within their respective academic departments and feedback on their own job performance provided them by multiple sources. In order to uncover any underlying congruence between the communication and feedback constructs, the data were subjected to canonical correlation analysis. The results revealed that the type of feedback, source of feedback, and perceived reliability of feedback sources were all found to interact in logical patterns with selected dimensions of organizational communication.