Process and Content in Performance Management: How Consistency and Supervisor Developmental Feedback Decrease Emotional Exhaustion Via High-Quality LMX

Abstract

Performance Management (PM) is often criticized for undermining employee emotional exhaustion. To avoid such unintended consequences, this study investigates how PM can be of benefit to employee emotional exhaustion by integrating both process and content aspects of PM. Results show that a consistent PM process, in which the same performance expectations are maintained across the different practices of performance planning, monitoring, and evaluation, is negatively related to employees’ emotional exhaustion, indirectly via the development of high-quality Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) relationships. Second, we found that, in terms of the content, supervisor developmental feedback acts as a moderator, determining the need to implement PM as a consistent process. A consistent PM process was especially important when the feedback provided throughout the PM process involved a lesser developmental content. When employees already received a large amount of developmental feedback, the degree to which the PM process was characterized by consistency made no difference to outcomes.