Dear Dr GV Kumar,
You have come up with a solution from a social standpoint, nevertheless, we need to assess it's workability.
Business environment in India is fiercely competitive. Competition keeps business persons on their toes. Their primary objective is to satisfy customers, expand business horizons by introducing innovative products or services and get fair returns on their investment.
Against this backdrop, allocating some funds for social cause like flood relief or earthquake is one thing and giving chance to defaulting employee to reform is another. Hardly any business person will find worthiness in spending time in counselling a delinquent employee to correct his/her behaviour. Counselling centres are there only in very big factories. However, their tangible results are not known.
Leadership demands use of coercive power when situation merits. Application of law or coercive power helps in creating deterrence and this very deterrence helps in building organisation's culture as well. When we start counselling a defaulting employee, what if few other employees also commit some other act of indiscipline? Should we counsel them too?
Institutions are built by nurturing employees. We need to give them remuneration as per the market standards, train them, motivate them and finally engage them. However, nurturing is different ftom pampering. Today when we accommodate someone's delinquencies, we forever have to be accommodative. Take example of our country itself. Our first Prime Minister Pt Jawaharlal Nehru allowed termite of indiscipline to grow under his feet. Had he been very strict right from the beginning, many of today's problems could have been circumvented. Today indiscipline has become part of our DNA. How to change the blood in the entire body is a challenge.
Argyr has compared discipline with hot stove. Hot stove gives equal burns irrespective of whose fingers these are. Wisdom dawns when fingers are burnt. A level-headed person understands the risk of straying from path. Those who take this risk, they do it at their own peril.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar