The Role of Perceived Feedback Sources’ Learning-Goal Orientation on Feedback Acceptance and Employees’ Creativity

In this study, we endeavor to explain comprehensively how a feedback receiver’s perception of feedback sources (i.e., leaders) encourages employee feedback acceptance and enhances their creativity through a mediating and moderating mechanism. A total of 190 employees and 53 leaders from 8 different organizations in South Korea were included in the final analysis. Using structural equation modeling, this study found that a feedback receiver’s perception of the feedback sources’ learning-goal orientation was positively related to their credibility through the high-quality feedback. Furthermore, the feedback acceptance was found to play a mediating role in the relationship between source credibility and employee creativity. Moreover, the results showed that the relationship between feedback acceptance and employee creativity was stronger when employees perceived their organizations as having a high-level learning organization culture. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are also addressed.