In contrast, negative task feedback indicates that employees’
performance is inadequate and they need to make more effort to
improve. For example, if a front-line service employee is under
heavy workload and time pressure, negative task feedback from
his or her supervisor will not help to solve the problem but actually
increase their burden. Although research suggests that negative
task feedback is better than none if employees are to improve
their subsequent behavior (Arvey and Ivancevich, 1980; Fodor and
Carver, 2000), it is not viable for challenge stressors. Time is critical
for individualswhowork under heavy workload and time pressures
as they need to perform a lot of tasks in a short period. However creativity involves the development of new and useful ideas, and
so needs time to develop; it also requires experiments such as
trial and error. Employees with a heavy workload may not have
the time available to engage in creative activities when supervisors
provide negative task feedback, because that will result in
more effort being necessary to complete their work according to
schedule. Such employees will be unable to feel achievement or
fulfillment at work and so may choose to be passive about the
job and only work to a minimum standard because they have too
much to do and not enough time. Accordingly, they are unlikely to
develop new ideas and generate novel approaches to solving problems.
Thus, if such employees receive negative task feedback from
a supervisor that serves no purpose to support them in making
improvements, their attention is less likely to be directed toward
learning and innovating on the job. Thus, we have the following
hypothesis.