Conventional wisdom suggests that frequent performance reporting is beneficial for decision making, as it can enhance timeliness and usefulness of the reported information for decision making. We investigate a potential motivational cost of frequent performance reporting. Using goal orientation theory, we predict and find that frequent performance reporting has negative motivational and performance implications when employees know or assume that the information they report will be used to evaluate their task-related skill. Our theory and results suggest that organizations need to balance the informational benefits and motivational costs of frequent reporting when designing their performance reporting systems. In addition, our theory and results can help organizations begin to design solutions that take advantage of the informational advantage of frequent reporting while minimizing its motivational costs.

Performance measure noise can be a critical barrier to employees' learning. Using an experiment, we examine whether the effects of performance measure noise on employees' learning depends on the type of learning in which employees engage: experiential versus vicarious. We predict and find performance measure noise has a more deleterious effect on learning when such learning occurs experientially rather than vicariously. Specifically, we find experiential learners demonstrate less learning as performance measure noise increases, but vicarious learners show no such effect of performance measure noise. Collectively, our findings suggest performance measure noise and learning type play important roles in the extent to which firms realize the decision-facilitating benefits of performance measurement systems. In particular, since much of the learning in modern organizations occurs vicariously, our findings suggest performance measure noise may not be as detrimental to employees' learning as previously thought.