Training and development of human resources in cooperatives

The cooperative form of or ganisation, its orientation, moorings and style of working are so characteristically differ ent from the other traditional organisations in developing countries that the problem of mobilisation of human resour ces with matching qualities for managing various positions within the cooperative system becomes truly acute. But the whole process of massive mobi lisation of human resources might just as well prove of no avail, if each individual is not sufficiently and properly trained and developed to perform his specific tasks on the shop floor, in the office, on the executive ladder or wherever the coopera tives have an employee to work.

The need for proper training and development of human re sources has to be viewed against the perspectives of operating a well integrated sys tem in economies dominated either by large western oriented private sector organisations or traditional small scale enter prises. Only a few developing countries, for instance, have manpower that can really run a marketing and distribution cum-retailing complex or an agri cultural banking system, fewer still have facilities for training and developing the required manpower. Thus the entire strategy for developing a co operative system in the third world countries may completely fail, if care is not taken at the same time to train and develop thousands of persons that are needed to run it. The success of the cooperative system, in a way, is intractably linked to the speed and efficiency with which facilities are created for provid ing this essential input. Such is the criticality of this major input.

K.K. Taimni presents here an integrated strategy to develop human resources in coopera tives, based on his extensive training and consultancy experie Ince. His stress is on non-formal, non-institutional as well as insti tutional methods and he views training as an instrument of career planning and a continuous process. His emphasis on train ing that is job oriented, organisa tional specific and of immediate relevance to the trainee, makes the book unique in several ways.