Mentor’s Comment:

Explain about discipline and show some benefits of it on individuals’ life. However, discipline in general is suppression of basic desire, wish and want and hence excessive suppression of personal desires may become counter-productive.

Mention what excessive ban on personal desires can lead to with examples. Conclude with the balanced points showing the mid path in dealing with disciplinary actions.

Model Answer:

Discipline is the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behaviour, using punishment to correct disobedient. Discipline ensures smooth flow of life without putting hindrances to the individual’s liberty.

Discipline teaches us to be systematic towards achieving our goal of life. It helps us to achieve our ambitions. Hence, a disciplined life is very important to have balanced way of living.

Discipline generally involves obeying, respect for authority and observance of established principles/rules. Following the laid out chain of command and hierarchy with discipline allows for smooth flow of vital information and the decisions taken, between all the levels of an organization. It increases efficiency of an organisation and helps in achieving the organizational objectives with common efforts.

However, discipline is the suppression of basic desire and is usually understood to by synonyms with restrain and self control. Self discipline to some extent is a substitute for motivation. However, excessive control sometimes leads to counterproductive such as:

• Too much discipline leads to moral corruption as under such situation, individuals conscience has no role to play. Following commands indiscriminately like what happened in Hitler’s Germany may lead to irreparable damages.
• Too much discipline can also kill creativity and eccentricity which is important for developmental tasks as they require innovation.
• Following the order without taking into account the merits of such an order may in fact cause harm both to the organization and larger society. This is all visible in the case of complacent bureaucracy remaining silent during caste and communal riots on the orders of political bosses.
• Too much suppression in the name of discipline leads to the development of counterproductive behaviour and may lead to implementation of wrong decisions due to lack of courage to counter the boss’s decisions.

So the effective way of maintaining discipline is adhering to the principles to that extent level till when it helps in creating positive work culture and conducive environment in the organisation. Involving employees in the process of decision making and valuing their ideas can also work in maintaining discipline in organisation. Discipline with consensus which adheres all with periodic appraisal can lead to enhanced outcome.