360-Degree Review

The German Reichswehr introduced multi-source evaluation around 1930, when military psychologist Johann Baptist Rieffert developed a methodology for assessing officer candidates that drew on observations from superiors, peers, and subordinates. The American military adopted a related approach during the same period, though without the subordinate appraisals that made the German model distinctive. For decades, the concept remained confined to military contexts, where hierarchy made anonymous upward feedback both radical and, for commanders who understood its value, indispensable.

The Esso Research and Engineering Company became the first documented corporate user of multi-source surveys in the 1950s, applying the method to evaluate employees across organizational levels. The approach spread slowly through the following decades, constrained by a practical obstacle that had nothing to do with willingness. Before typewriters and computers became standard office equipment, feedback had to be handwritten, making true anonymity nearly impossible and undermining the entire premise of candid assessment.

General Electric accelerated adoption in the 1980s and 1990s when CEO Jack Welch incorporated 360-degree feedback into the company's evaluation and ranking system. Welch used the results alongside a six sigma quality program to identify and remove what he considered the bottom ten percent of performers each year. The method acquired its current name in 1996, when authors Mark R. Edwards and Ann J. Ewen coined the term in their published work. By 2009, Fortune magazine estimated that ninety percent of Fortune 500 companies used some form of multi-rater feedback.

The system designed to give workers a voice in evaluating leadership became, in many organizations, another instrument of ranking and elimination. A 2013 estimate from the consulting firm 3D Group found that approximately fifty-five percent of all U.S. companies used some version of the process.