Do you value or worry about feedback? Tradeoffs between cost and value perceptions and dual feedback‐seeking strategies toward creativity

Summary This study advances the literature by elaborating on how disparate tradeoffs between cost and value perceptions targeted at FSB lead to distinct feedback‐seeking strategies. Specifically, the cost–value framework is employed to explain the emergence of two forms of feedback‐seeking behavior (FSB), namely, inquiry and monitoring. An interplay between the two FSB strategies is also proposed to predict employee creativity. Data collected from 194 individuals across 76 work teams reveal that high cost–low value perceptions are negatively related and low cost–high value perceptions are positively related to inquiry strategy. Such incongruence between cost and value perceptions shows no significant effect on monitoring strategy. Instead, employees adopt a monitoring strategy when they perceive congruence or ambiguous tradeoffs related to FSB (high cost–high value, low cost–low value). Analysis indicates the interplay between the two FSB strategies in which the highest level of creativity is observed when employees use both inquiry and monitoring strategies at high levels. This study complements and enriches the feedback literature by theorizing and empirically validating comparative effects of cost and value perceptions toward FSB as well as the interplay between the two FSB strategies in predicting employee creativity.