Recontextualizing Negative Feedback Through Talk and Text in Corporate Performance Appraisal Processes

This article examines the critical role of feedback in corporate performance appraisals, focusing on the construction of negative feedback in 15 performance appraisal processes at GlobalCorp, a small-sized Belgian company. Based on video-recordings, textual preparations and reports, and follow-up interviews with managers, we use a multipronged mixed-method approach to examine the position and importance of negative feedback in the company’s performance appraisal processes, and to explore how negative feedback is formulated and recontextualized throughout the different discursive phases of the individual performance appraisals. Our findings reveal an institutional need to formulate negative feedback clearly, but at the same time, the managers orient to it as a socially problematic action in both written and spoken form, despite its integral role in the appraisal process. Finally, this study underlines the importance of a tailored and multipronged methodological approach that allows for triangulation to reach in-depth insights on complex and multimodal datasets in business communication research.