In Lugano, what is feedback worth when bonuses contradict it?
In a bank, a fashion or trading business, or an Italian-speaking family SME in Lugano, feedback is not received independently of remuneration rules. The managerial question is precise: how much weight can advice carry when following it risks undermining what determines the bonus?
What the literature establishes
Steven Kerr (1975, Academy of Management Journal) analyses situations in which rewarded behaviours differ from those an organisation claims to want. His article is an illustrated analysis of organisational contradictions, not an experiment measuring feedback effectiveness. It invites managers to examine what reward systems actually encourage before attributing behaviour to a failure of understanding.
The mechanism: shifting effort towards what counts
Bengt Holmström and Paul Milgrom (1991, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization) develop a theoretical model in which an employee allocates effort across tasks that differ in how readily they can be measured. Strong incentives on a measured dimension can divert effort from other important but less observable dimensions. Applied to feedback, this mechanism suggests that advice to spend time transferring knowledge may compete with a bonus based solely on personal sales.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that every behaviour requested in a feedback conversation should be rewarded financially. These studies do not justify that generalisation: adding criteria guarantees neither their quality nor their compatibility. The useful distinction is between feedback that clarifies how to succeed under existing rules and feedback that asks employees to act against the incentives that still apply to them. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these studies cannot establish
Neither article directly compares feedback conversations with and without a bonus link, and neither examines businesses in Lugano. They therefore cannot quantify the effect of such a contradiction on whether feedback is acted upon. Common practice nevertheless has an identifiable limitation: refining the wording of a message without checking the economic trade-offs it imposes on its recipient.
A practical check in Lugano
As part of SHR's « L'art du feedback » programme, a Lugano team could spend one month reviewing actions agreed in feedback conversations against written bonus or appraisal criteria. For each action — documenting a banking file, sharing information between sales and stock management in fashion, safeguarding a trading transaction, or training a successor in an Italian-speaking family SME — the manager and employee would record any contradiction and the relevant rule, without copying client data. The indicator would be the proportion of reviewed actions with a documented contradiction; a register would then identify which conflicts had received an explicit management decision rather than being left for the employee to resolve alone. To go further: explore the The Art of Feedback training in Lugano in the canton of Ticino, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: The Art of Feedback in Lugano
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