Is there such a thing as multitasking for corporate organizations? Performance feedback on multiple goals

Abstract

The existence of goals has been a central premise in the study of management research. Over the past decades, it has become increasingly relevant for corporate organizations to include nonfinancial goals in the organizational strategy. While performance feedback theory has given a lot of attention to single goal assessment, often a financially related one, the multiple goal perspective has received little attention. In addition, the board is the most important corporate decision-making body that is responsible for interpreting feedback on organizational goals. Board diversity has become an emerging research topic to investigate the way it influences strategic decision-making. To fill these theoretical gaps, this research looks at inconsistent feedback on multiple goals regarding R&D search and if this relation is influenced by board diversity. By using a Regression Analysis, this research was able to examine the effects of these dependence relationships. The results indicate that interpreting inconsistent feedback has a shortterm effect on increasing R&D search. In addition, the results show that this relation is influenced by several board compositions. Namely, the number of female, independent, and industry-specific skills directors present. In sum, the composition of the board has a significant effect on how to interpret inconsistent feedback on multiple goals.