Performance Feedback Configurations and Knowledge Search Breadth: A Moderated Polynomial Regression

Performance feedback fundamentally shapes strategic behavior yet research rarely addresses the simultaneous pursuit of multiple goals. We adopt a configurational approach to examine how innovation and financial feedback congruence and incongruence impact knowledge search breadth. Integrating the behavioral theory of the firm with the cognitive augmentation perspective we find that consistent negative feedback triggers the most extensive search while consistent success reinforces organizational inertia. We also identify an asymmetric financial attention bias where the combination of high innovation and low financial performance drives wider search than the inverse. Crucially, this asymmetry is pronounced only when artificial intelligence capability is low, revealing that financial survival remains the primary managerial focus under human bounded rationality. Our study establishes firm artificial intelligence as a cognitive stabilizer that standardizes search responses and mitigates path dependent biases in the feedback response process. These findings contribute to behavioral research by shifting the analytical focus toward holistic configurations and identifying artificial intelligence as a strategic capability that reshapes organizational attention logic.