Paul Green, a doctoral candidate at Harvard Business School, and two colleagues studied field data from a company that used a transparent peer-review process and also gave its 300 employees some say in defining their jobs and, thus, over whom they worked with. The researchers’ analysis revealed that critical appraisals from colleagues drove employees to adjust their roles to be around people who would give them more-positive reviews. The conclusion: Negative feedback rarely leads to improvement.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2018 issue (pp.32–33) of Harvard Business Review.
