Exploring the Relative Worth of Attributes of Tea Garden Managers - A Study with Reference to South Assam

Identification of the traits required for a particular job may be such a matter over which there might be a difference of opinion among the people at the helm of affairs, be they academicians, researchers or working executives specially when it comes to fix up the relative importance i.e., which human trait/attribute/attitude, in what degree is more and which is less required to perform a particular job. The identification of the requisite traits and qualities in a particular employee may also be a cumbersome and delicate job as this may require the selection of the right method of performance appraisal or for that matter a mechanism with the help of which the needed traits are to be identified. A possibility of a difference in opinion cannot also be ruled out in this case and therefore unless an appropriate mechanism is identified for the purpose there may remain a possibility of wrong or incomplete evaluation of the qualities of an employee.

It is in view of the above stated that it was decided to probe into this matter i.e., the relative worth of various human traits and characteristics. Since every industry requires a different set of human traits and characteristics in its manpower, of course differing cadre-wise, the problem was decided to be probed with reference to just one industry i.e., Tea Industry of India keeping in mind the poor availability of the previous research done on this aspect of manpower management of this industry. As the dependence for the data collection had to be made on certain firm/unit/firms spread over some area, the tea producing units of south Assam were selected.