Utility Assessment of Specificity in Upward Feedback Instruments for Leadership Development

Recently, organizations have been modifying performance appraisal systems to collect data from multiple sources to guide the development of supervisors. Upward feedback programs focus on development rather than appraisal by supplementing traditional downward feedback with subordinate feedback. The utility of two upward feedback instruments was assessed in this study; one is a commercially available instrument, the Leadership Practices Inventory (Posner and Kouzes, 1988) and the other is the recently developed, non-proprietary Upward Feedback Instrument (Patton, 2002). The Upward Feedback Instrument was designed to measure leadership behaviors at a more specific level. It was thought that greater feedback specificity would lead to greater intentions to change behavior and consequently, greater actual behavior change. This research developed and administered a utility assessment to supervisors and their subordinates in order to determine the performance of the respective instruments. Although the feedback specificity did not provide greater intentions to change, discretion, perceived organizational support, and perceptions of accuracy and usefulness were found to significantly affect intentions to change and actual behavior change.