Peer review in bureaucracies operates informally and punishes rather than supports workers.

Evidence

But breaking down the isolation of individual street-level bureaucrats will be mostly destructive if it is done simply in the name of higher degrees of scrutiny. … Currently peer review takes place in the unsystematic culture of lunchroom chatter, casual observation, and third-hand reputational assessment. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1489

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to organizational-culture and tacit-knowledge literatures (e.g. Orr’s photocopier technicians) on informal knowledge transmission doing the work formal systems can’t.