Browsing by Author "Dissanayake, D.M.S.M."

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    Developing a Scientific Method to Calculate the Surface Moisture of Fresh Green Tea Leaves on Wet Days
    (Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka, 2015) Dissanayake, D.M.S.M.
    Plucking is the most labor-intensive field operation in tea plantations. Laborers are paid according to the kilograms of shoots plucked. With the agreement of workers, the estate management used to deduct one kg weight from the weight of green leaf plucked in a round when there is rain during the plucking time. Although this practice is. in agreement with estate level workers' union, any estate does not have any systematic methodology or governing law/ regulation to demonstrate that this deduction is appropriately justifiable. Therefore, this study was focused to develop and evaluate scientifically accepted method to determine weight reduction to offset the surface moisture of tea shoots plucked during rainy days. Different volumes of water were sprayed using a Knapsack sprayer on green leaf taken from selected field to simulate different rainfalls. Moisture contents of green leaf before and after water spraying were measured using a moisture analyzer and surface moisture contents at different simulated rainfalls were estimated. Using the data on surface moisture at different rain falls, a regression model was developed to calculate surface moisture content of tea leaf during rainy days. This model can be used to calculate the amount of weight to be deducted from the weight of tea leaf plucked during rainy days in Nuwara-Eliya and Dimbula regions. Key words: Plucking, green leaf, weight deduction
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    The Impact of Sales Agents' Personality Traits on Perceived Service Quality of Customers (With Special Reference to the Insurance Industry In Western Province)
    (Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka, 2015) Dissanayake, D.M.S.M.
    The global improvement of the service industry is witnessed during the last few decades. This improvement is followed by huge changes in the labour market for services. Thereby, the personality traits of the service providers emerged as a concerning trend in measuring service quality. The insurance industry is an industry that experienced a huge growth in the last decades. However, the penetration of insurance in Sri Lanka is significantly low. Hence, the workforce of the insurance industry must have capabilities to attract more' consumers towards them. Due to this problem, the study aimed to investigate the impact of the personality traits of the sales agents on the perceived service quality by the customers. The respondents of the study were 142 insurance policyholders in the Western province who selected using a mixed method of convenient sampling, judgmental sampling, and snowball sampling. Data were collected through a standard and validated questionnaire survey. The data were analyzed using correlation coefficient, regression analysis, and descriptive analysis. The results of this study suggest that sales agents' personality traits significantly impact on the perceived service quality. Further, there is a high positive relationship between sales agents' personality traits and the perceived service quality. In addition, the results suggest that Openness to Experience of the personality traits is the most significant dimension to the perceived service quality of the customers. The findings of the study suggest that the management decisions for recruiting employees with the right type of personalities and developing the personality of the employees for the insurance industry and other service industries in Sri Lanka is crucial to achieve the competitive advantages over the competitors. Key words — Personality traits, Big five personality dimensions, Service quality, SERVQUAL model, Insurance industry