Determinants of leadership skills among the board of directors of primary multipurpose cooperatives societies in Gambella town, Ethiopia

Now a day cooperatives act in a very different environments. The need to compete in an open and globalized market has obliged them to rationalize structures and professionalize many boards of directors. The most important reason for the down fall and dormancy state of many multipurpose cooperatives in the region currently is the absence of effective leadership qualities and skills among their cooperative leaders. With this backdrop, the study investigated the leadership skills among the leaders of multipurpose cooperatives. Out of 31 primary multipurpose cooperatives operating in the town, 16 primary cooperatives were selected purposively as the study units. By adopting census method all the 128 board of directors representing from 16 primary multipurpose cooperatives were selected as study population. The study was heavily dependent on primary data which was collected from the board of directors by administering structured questionnaire. Econometric model viz., binary logistic regression was used to assess the determinants of leadership skill among the board of directors. The results of binary logistic regression analysis shows that variable such as: age, access to training, leadership experience, media exposure, leader member relations and government interference were found to be the major variables that strongly determines the leadership skills. Those variables such as: age, and leader member relations were found to have negative significant effect whereas leadership experience, media exposure, access to training, and government interference were found to have positive significant effect on leadership skills. Based on the findings it is suggested that the leaders of cooperatives need to be given training on leadership qualities, skills and on the functionalities of cooperatives.