Discipline in the Work Place

There have been several experiences in my life in which I have witnessed the higher up discipline someone.  One occasion was when I was involved in a research project in which four student research assistant including myself were working under a professor.  After about two months into the research project, one of the research assistants began to get busy or lazy and started to not contribute as much to the project and would sometimes not even show up to the weekly project meetings.  After a while of this behavior happening, the professor pulled the student outside of the meeting room after one of our weekly meeting so he could have a private talk with the student.  After that, the student told us in our group chat that the Professor basically said to him, "I know you may be getting busier with balancing research and school work, but when you agreed to take this research assistant position, you agreed to dedicate a certain weekly amount of time to it (it was 10-15 hours a week).  I expect that requirement to be met otherwise I might not be able to keep you as my research assistant because it wouldn't be fair to the other group members or the other students that may be interested in your position."  The reaction the student had to that discipline was that he wasn't really bothered by it because he knew he screwed up.  So afterwards, the student never really missed another meeting and actively contribute more to the project.  

A more memorable experience was when I was playing soccer and lacrosse.  Punishment was basically used as a weapon by the coaches in order to discipline players on the team.  From the perspective of the players, the punishment from the coaches, which was running, was something to be feared as it was theoretically possible for the coaches to make you keep running forever.  Obviously one might think that the coaches wouldn't actually make the players run forever even if the players keep making mistakes or are unproductive because it may have negative affects, however I can recount many times in which the coaches actually made us run for what felt like an eternity.  So just by having those previous experiences made players not want repeat that experience again and start to be more productive.  Also, the players couldn't really do anything to resist the punishment of running unless they were to just quit the team right then and there which never happened.

in my opinion, I think that whether someone rehabilitates or "hardens" after a punishment has to do with many factor some of which are how the punishment was dealt out, how the person reacts to the punishment, and in what type of environment the punishment is in.  A fictitious example of what I mean by this is that a higher up may discipline a worker in front of the other employees and this could have two possible outcomes.  One, that worker never wants to be humiliated again in front of his fellow coworkers so he/she begins to be more productive.  Or two, the worker resents the higher up for humiliating them in front of everyone and feels that there pride was damaged so they "harden" and don't rehabilitate.  But an alternative scenario for two is that, if the same higher up punished the same worker in a more private setting, then the worker may have felt more compelled to actually be more productive because the punishment was more moderate.  So overall I believe that there are many variables that affect this, however I would think that in terms of punishment for the use of rehabilitation, it would be a safer bet for the punishment to be more moderate.

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanNovember 8, 2019 at 12:00 PM

    In your first example where the student was apparently shirking, it was unclear to me what the full deal was. Was the student paid as a research assistant? Did the student get course credit? Or was it an all-volunteer activity? Do note that in the first two cases there might be some other way to punish (reduced the student's pay, give a lower grade, etc.) . If one of those forms was present the talking to might have been the first step in a sequence where a subsequent step would have been to use these other forms of punishment. In that world you might then ask whether going to the second step immediately and bypassing the first step would have been better. The general thought is to take the milder form first.

    As you've written about your soccer team a lot, I wonder if your coaches actually expected the players to help another player who is struggling or to apply some different punishment on a player who triggered the group punishment where everyone had to run a lot. It is my sense of things that certain team leaders among the players are sometimes expected to do this - it is not all one the coaches. But the team leaders wouldn't be effective if the coaches didn't also intervene now and then. Does that fit your setting at all?

    I only know about the military from watching movies and TV. There's a well known movie associated with Stanley Kubrick - Full Metal Jacket - where the drill sergeant really rags on a particular soldier who eventually goes over the deep end and then gets his revenge. The movie is effective because the stereotype that the drill sergeant plays to is of just such behavior. Could the military be so wrong in sanctioning that sort of thing? Or does context matter as to where this kind of discipline can/should be applied?

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    1. WesleyAuNovember 10, 2019 at 3:06 PM

      We were getting research course credit for being research assistants. I guess the professor could have lowered the research assistants grade and he may have (we didn't receive grades until the very end), but I think that the professor mainly just wanted competent research assistants because this was his research we were working on. And maybe there were some implications for him if he didn't meet deadlines or something.

      As for your questions about my soccer team, I believe that it was definitely the goal of the coaches to make all the players rely on each other and help each other out when individuals were struggling (which did happen occasionally). In a weird sense, the running punishments that the coaches made us do was somewhat a of a team bonding experience because we were all working together and suffering together. I also think that this was how the coaches picked the team captains, they picked those that were able to bring the moral up and help support others even when themselves and everyone else was struggling.

      I believe that context does matter as to where this kind of discipline can/ should be applied. However I think it is the context of the military that does warrant the military to sanction drill sergeants being harsh because they are most probably going to face much more difficult task in the future than that drill sergeant. They could be just using the drill sergeant as an additional adjustment of mindset for the soldiers.

      However, I haven't watched the movie, Full metal Jacket, so I'm not sure how much the drill sergeant did rag on a the particular soldier which could have been over the top. So there are limits to the harshness of the discipline but those limits vary depending on the environment.

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