Psychological and leadership orientation of development officials in India - A diagnostic study of soil and water conservation training programme

Abstract

The working style of state line departments and their working climate which affect the behaviour of development officials is one of the important areas for comprehension and improvement for attaining the higher performance level in agriculture and allied fields. The study to know about the psychological orientation of the development functionaries working in the different state line departments of the country was conducted on 57 such participant officials who attended the training programme on soil and water conservation during 2014-16 at ICAR-IISWC, Dehradun including 10 scientists/technical officers. Results showed that nature of job, perceived influence and supervisory behaviour of the development functionaries was remarkably satisfactory. Relatively higher motivating-empowering style of leadership indicated that the development functionaries tend to motivate and enable their subordinates during working. Poor initiative and reflective behaviour with high self-esteem, inferred that development functionaries were psychologically not strongly oriented towards empowerment. The dimensions like 'number and target syndrome', ‘centralization’ and ‘caste like rigidity’ were quite high, which indicated that the development functionaries are favourably disposed to physical targets as against quality performance. The flexibility and keep themselves away and isolated and control all actions with absolute authority was missing whereas 'lack of community participation’, 'rentier dole syndrome', ‘tokenism’ and 'paternalistic manipulation' were on higher side which reflected that they do not value more to the people's participation in the development activities. To create suitable working climate, the organization should organize need based capacity building programmes for positive psychological orientation among development functionaries.