Feedback is a circular causal process whereby some proportion of a system's output is returned (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, thermodynamics, and biology.

In organizations, feedback is a process of sharing observations, concerns and suggestions between persons or divisions of the organization with an intention of improving both personal and organizational performance.

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.Fact: date=November 2007 Homeostasis is especially visible in the nervous and endocrine systems when considered at organism level.

Types of feedback

main: positive feedback Types of feedback are:

• positive feedback: which seeks to increase the output that caused it, as in a nuclear chain-reaction. This is also known as a self-reinforcing loop.

• negative feedback: which seeks to cancel the output that caused it, as in a thermostat-controlled heater. This is also known as a self-correcting or balancing loop.

The terms negative and positive feedback can be used less formally to describe or imply criticism and praise, respectively. This may lead to confusion with the terms positive and negative reinforcement.

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. Fact: date=September 2008

Negative feedback was applied by Harold Stephen Black to electrical amplifiers in 1927, but he could not get his idea patented until 1937.

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. Fact: date=September 2008