Information about Feedback

In organizational context, feedback is a process of sharing observations, concerns and suggestions with the other person with an intention of improving his/her performance as an individual. Feedback has to be bi-directional so that continuous improvement is possible in a organization.

In cybernetics and control theory, feedback is a process whereby some proportion of the output signal of a system is passed (fed back) to the input. This is often used to control the dynamic behavior of the system. Examples of feedback can be found in most complex systems, such as engineering, architecture, economics, and biology. Arturo Rosenblueth, a Mexican researcher and physician whose seminal 1943 paper “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology“, according to Norbert Wiener, set the basis for the new science of cybernetics proposed that behavior controlled by negative feedback, applied to either animal, human or machine was a determinant and directive principle, or finality in nature or human creations.

Overview

Feedback is both a mechanism, process and signal that is looped back to control a system within itself. This loop is called the feedback loop. A control system usually has input and output to the system; when the output of the system is fed back into the system as part of its input, it is called the "feedback."

Feedback and regulation are self related. The negative feedback helps to maintain stability in a system in spite of external changes. It is related to homeostasis. Positive feedback amplifies possibilities of divergences (evolution, change of goals); it is the condition to change, evolution, growth; it gives the system the ability to access new points of equilibrium.

For example, in an organism, most positive feedback provide for fast autoexcitation of elements of endocrine and nervous systems (in particular, in stress responses conditions) and play a key role in regulation of morphogenesis, growth, and development of organs, all processes which are in essence a rapid escape from the initial state. Homeostasis is especially visible in the nervous and endocrine systems when considered at organism level.

Types of feedback

Main articles: Negative feedback and positive feedback

Types of feedback are:

• negative feedback: which tends to reduce output (but in amplifiers, stabilizes and linearizes operation),
• positive feedback: which tends to increase output, or
• bipolar feedback: which can either increase or decrease output.

Systems which include feedback are prone to hunting, which is oscillation of output resulting from improperly tuned inputs of first positive then negative feedback. Audio feedback typifies this form of oscillation.

Bipolar feedback is present in many natural and human systems. Feedback is usually bipolar—that is, positive and negative—in natural environments, which, in their diversity, furnish synergic and antagonistic responses to the output of any system.

Applications

In biology

In biological systems such as organisms, ecosystems, or the biosphere, most parameters must stay under control within a narrow range around a certain optimal level under certain environmental conditions. The deviation of the optimal value of the controlled parameter can result from the changes in internal and external environments. A change of some of the environmental conditions may also require change of that range to change for the system to function. The value of the parameter to maintain is recorded by a reception system and conveyed to a regulation module via an information channel.

Biological systems contain many types of regulatory circuits, both positive and negative. As in other contexts, Positive and negative don't imply consequences of the feedback have good or bad final effect. A negative feedback loop is one that tends to slow down a process, while the positive feedback loop tends to accelerate it.

The mirror neurons are part of a social feedback system, when an observed action is ´mirrored´ by the brain - like a self performed action.

Feedback is also central to the operations of genes and gene regulatory networks. repressor (see Lac repressor) and activator proteins are used to create genetic operons, which were identified by Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod in 1961 as feedback loops.

Any self-regulating natural process involves feedback and is prone to hunting. A well known example in ecology is the oscillation of the population of snowshoe hares due to predation from lynxes.

In zymology, feedback serves as regulation of activity of an enzyme by its direct product(s) or downstream metabolite(s) in the metabolic pathway (see Allosteric regulation).

There is an ice-albedo positive feedback loop whereby melting snow exposes more dark ground (of lower albedo), which in turn absorbs heat and causes more snow to melt. This is part of the evidence of the danger of global warming.

In economics and finance

A system prone to hunting (oscillating) is the stock market, which has both positive and negative feedback mechanisms. This is due to cognitive and emotional factors belonging to the field of behavioral finance. For example,

• When stocks are rising (a bull market), the belief that further rises are probable gives investors an incentive to buy (positive feedback, see also stock market bubble); but the increased price of the shares, and the knowledge that there must be a peak after which the market will fall, ends up deterring buyers (negative feedback).
• Once the market begins to fall regularly (a bear market), some investors may expect further losing days and refrain from buying (positive feedback), but others may buy because stocks become more and more of a bargain (negative feedback).

George Soros used the word "reflexism" to describe feedback in the financial markets and developed an investment theory based on this principle.

The conventional economic equilibrium model of supply and demand supports only ideal linear negative feedback and was heavily criticized by Paul Ormerod in his book "The Death of Economics" which in turn was criticized by traditional economists. This book was part of a change of perspective as economists started to recognise that Chaos Theory applied to nonlinear feedback systems including financial markets.

In electronic engineering

The processing and control of feedback is engineered into many electronic devices and may also be embedded in other technologies.

The most common general-purpose controller is a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller. Each term of the PID controller copes with time. The proportional term handles the present state of the system, the integral term handles its past, and the derivative or slope term tries to predict and handle the future.

If the signal is inverted on its way round the control loop, the system is said to have negative feedback; otherwise, the feedback is said to be positive. Negative feedback is often deliberately introduced to increase the stability and accuracy of a system, as in the feedback amplifier invented by Harold Stephen Black. This scheme can fail if the input changes faster than the system can respond to it. When this happens, the negative feedback signal begins to act as positive feedback, causing the output to oscillate or hunt. Positive feedback is usually an unwanted consequence of system behaviour.

With mechanical devices, hunting can be severe enough to destroy the device.

Harry Nyquist was an electrical engineer who contributed the Nyquist plot for determining the stability of feedback systems.

In mechanical engineering

In ancient times, the float valve was used to regulate the flow of water in Greek and Roman water clocks; similar float valves are used to regulate fuel in a carburetor and also used to regulate tank water level in the flush toilet.

The windmill was enhanced in 1745 by blacksmith Edmund Lee who added a fantail to keep the face of the windmill pointing into the wind. In 1787 Thomas Mead regulated the speed of rotation of a windmill by using a centrifugal pendulum to adjust the distance between the bedstone and the runner stone (i.e. to adjust the load).

The use of the centrifugal governor by James Watt in 1788 to regulate the speed of his steam engine was one factor leading to the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines also use float valves and pressure release valves as mechanical regulation devices. A mathematical analysis of Watt's governor was done by James Clerk Maxwell in 1868.

The Great Eastern was one of the largest steamships of its time and employed a steam powered rudder with feedback mechanism designed in 1866 by J.McFarlane Gray. Joseph Farcot coined the word servo in 1873 to describe steam powered steering systems. Hydraulic servos were later used to position guns. Elmer Ambrose Sperry of the Sperry Corporation designed the first autopilot in 1912. Nicolas Minorsky published a theoretical analysis of automatic ship steering in 1922 and described the PID controller.

Internal combustion engines of the late 20th century employed mechanical feedback mechanisms such as vacuum advance (see: Ignition timing) but mechanical feedback was replaced by electronic engine management systems once small, robust and powerful single-chip microcontrollers became affordable.

In organizations

As an organization seeks to improve its performance, feedback helps it to make required adjustments.

Examples of feedback in organizations:

• Financial audit
• performance appraisal
• shareholder meetings
• Marketing research
• 360-degree feedback

See also

• Audio feedback
• Interaction
• Low-key feedback
• Optical feedback
• Perverse incentive
• Stability criterion
• Tactile
• Unintended consequence
• Resonance

References

• Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play. MIT Press. 2004. ISBN 0-262-24045-9. Chapter 18: Games as Cybernetic Systems.
• Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends. Moscow: URSS, 2006. ISBN 5-484-00559-0