Lecturer, Department of Cooperative Studies, College of Business and Economics, Mekelle University, P.O. Box: 451, Mekelle, Tigray, Ethiopia
Online published on 2 July, 2015.
Central to the success or failure of any cooperative is a functioning Board of Directors that represents all of the cooperative's members. Therefore, it is critical that the right cooperative members are nominated and elected to the Board of Directors (BoD). 1 This paper reflects upon the availability of required environment for qualifications of Board members taking different indicators i.e. level of education, sex composition, age, years of membership, number of shares owned by the BOD, remuneration of the Board, number of committees, experience in other positions, calling general assembly on time and Trainings conducted. Four different zones in Tigray region were selected randomly from which the sample cooperatives were taken. All members of board of directors of the selected cooperative societies were taken as sample respondents.
The results of the study showed that the board's sex composition is not balanced that there is male domination. The educational level of the board members is generally elementary. It is also shown that the boards have plenty of years of membership in their cooperative with good work experience in other positions other than their cooperative organizations including tabia administration, kebelle level positions as well as in their union. Training participation they had in fact is very limited and inadequate.
