Implication of leadership efficiency on cooperatives development!! An exploratory study

Cooperatives are considered as important economic and social organizations providing various services to the farmers, developing agriculture, creating income sources, employment opportunities and others. It is assumed that efficient leadership is a cornerstone for the better performance of cooperatives which attract and retain the members. According to the officials of Sidama Zone Cooperative Bureau, there are leadership problems in most of the cooperatives and the problem is severe in Wondo Gennet Distict. Hence this research paper is focused on the objectives; i) To assess the overall efficiency of leaders in the sample cooperatives; (ii) To examine the impact of leadership efficiency on the development of cooperatives in the study area. (iii) To investigate the leadership development programs organized by the stakeholders and (iv) To assess the satisfaction of members regarding the management of cooperatives. To address the objectives, primary data was collected using semi-structured interview schedule from 128 members of sample 12 SACCOs selected by Yamane (1967) sample determination formula. In addition, five management committee members from each cooperative were selected purposively to assess the leadership competency. Thus total sample size was 188. In addition, focus group discussions and key informant interviews were carried out to elicit relevant information. The collected data was analysed using SPSS (version 21) to arrive meaningful results. Statistical tools such as Mean, Standard Deviation, Chi-square Test, and Test of Significance were adopted for analysis and interpretation of data. The results are presented in the form of tabulation and diagrams. The overall results indicate that leadership efficiency of management committee is seems to be moderate (3.4) perceived by the members. It is found that only 47.6% of the sample members are satisfied with the operation and management of cooperatives. There is a lack of training programmes for the improvement of leadership efficiency of committee members. Both members and the leaders perceived that leadership efficiency is more essential for the development of Cooperatives. The sample Cooperatives faced number of challenges due to the leadership inefficiency. It is suggested that relevant stakeholders need to arrange the periodical leadership training to the management committee of the cooperatives so as to improve the performance as expected.