Discipline at work: distal and proximal views

Abstract

This paper is about discipline at work. From a distal perspective, discipline may be understood in terms of an achievement, an effect, an outcome, a social phenomenon already constituted. In contrast, a proximal perspective suggests that discipline is a social process constantly working its way through organizational practices, on its way to be constituted but not quite yet finalized. The paper documents the outcomes and the workings of discipline in LOGICOM, a UK service organization which has embarked recently on a total customer satisfaction (TCS) program. In so doing, it argues that the outcome of disciplinary power is the organizational self. In LOGICOM, employees appear to identify, innovate, comply, be resilient, or rebel against the goal of TCS and the institutionalized means for achieving it. The workings of discipline are then explored via the technologies of domination and technologies of the self that characterize TCS. It is concluded that the workings of such disciplinary mechanisms are not entirely effective and, consequently, the outcomes of discipline are difficult to predict or know from beforehand. Thus, the “disciplined employee” is a fictitious category, something that the organization may strive for, but can never realize.