Determinants of feedback effectiveness in production planning

Purpose – The focus is the interplay of cognitive capabilities (mathematical understanding and heuristic problem solving) and learning from feedback. Furthermore, the authors analyze the role of individual factors in designing appropriate feedback systems for complex decision-making situations. Based on a learning model the purpose of this paper is to present an experimental study analyzing the feedback effectiveness in a repeated complex production planning task. Referring to individual characteristics in terms of educational background and problem solving capabilities of the decision maker the authors compare different forms of feedback systems. Design/methodology/approach – The authors performed four experiments bi-weekly based on a realistic production planning situation. Participants received – depending on the treatment – different types of feedback concerning the final outcomes of the production plans. For testing the hypotheses, the authors conducted ANCOVAs and additional post hoc tests for each subgroup to explore the effects of different types of feedback on the subgroups’ decision-making performance. Findings – The authors show that feedback information is not always helpful, but due to acquired knowledge and problem solving capabilities can even be harmful. The authors also show that, depending on the decision maker’s individual characteristics and her past performance, the type of feedback is crucial for the learning process. Practical implications – The study provides important information about feedback design taking individual characteristics of decision makers (educational background, work experience) into account. Applying the results of the study can increase decision-making performance and enhance learning of production planning tasks. Originality/value – The findings extend previous literature reporting that the performance in complex decision-making tasks depends on educational background and on the ability to cope with the phenomena of cognitive load, working memory limitations and the capability to utilize relevant heuristics to prevent information overload. Some of our results, e.g., the negative impact of non-financial feedback of high-performing economists, contradict the general findings in the literature.