Angelo DeNisi

Angelo DeNisi is a professor emeritus at Tulane University’s A. B. Freeman School of Business whose research includes performance appraisal and performance management. His work asks how people form judgments about performance and how organizations use those judgments.

DeNisi and Avraham Kluger coauthored a 1996 review and meta-analysis of feedback interventions. Although the average effect on performance was positive, more than 38% of the analyzed effects were negative. That variation challenges the assumption that giving feedback, without considering its design or context, reliably improves work. DeNisi also wrote A Cognitive Approach to Performance Appraisal, a book about the processes behind evaluators’ judgments, and coedited Performance Management Systems: A Global Perspective.

His research is useful to leaders designing reviews and accountability practices: a rating or feedback conversation is not simply a transfer of objective information. How performance is observed, interpreted and discussed deserves scrutiny.