Integrating the performance feedback and organizational transparency literatures we develop and test a model that explains how and under what conditions performance feedback transparency influences employees' task and contextual performance. We conceptualize performance feedback transparency as the extent to which employees have a line of sight into their own and potentially their peers' performance metrics. The model predicts that performance feedback transparency can elicit both status concerns, with negative effects on task and contextual performance, and a learning focus, with positive effects on task but negative effects on contextual performance. We further theorize that narrative feedback and relative performance position function as boundary conditions, in that they both attenuate the effects of performance feedback transparency on status concerns and enhance the effects on learning focus. A laboratory experiment provides empirical support for the mediating mechanisms with respect to task performance, but not contextual performance. Furthermore, neither narrative feedback nor relative performance position were found to moderate the indirect effects of performance feedback transparency on performance outcomes. We discuss the implications of the theoretical and empirical findings for the feedback literature and the organizational transparency literature.
