Preliminary investigation into the relationship between occupational attributional styles and employee reaction to multisource feedback

The study conducted a preliminary investigation into the relationship between participants' occupational attributional styles, measured by the revised Occupational Attributional Style Questionnaire, and how participants assigned specific attributional explanations, measured by the Causal Dimension Scale II, to a positive and negative hypothetical multisource feedback performance appraisal. The research study was undertaken to find out if occupational attributional style could be considered a cognitive moderator involved in determining how multisource feedback recipients resolve the self-other discrepancies associated with receiving multisource feedback. A secondary purpose of the research study was to test the Occupational Attributional Style Questionnaire's ability to predict participants' attributional explanations to specific events. The study utilized a quasi-experimental approach that used a mixed, within-subject and matched-subject, research design. The independent variables consisted of a positive and a negative hypothetical multisource feedback performance appraisal, and the dependent variables consisted of participants' subscale and composite scores on the Causal Dimension Scale II. A convenience sample of 43 working adults completed the study. Results indicated that many participants drifted away from their occupational attributional style when assigning specific attributional explanations to a positive and negative hypothetical multisource feedback performance appraisal; hence, occupational attributional style does not appear to be a significant enough cognitive moderator for practitioners to use in anticipating or predicting how recipients may react to multisource feedback. The implication of the study indicates that the revised Occupational Attributional Style Questionnaire is not a more robust attributional style measure than previously developed global or specific attributional style measures.