Leadership and Performance Status of Agricultural Cooperative Unions: The Case of Arsi Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

The study was undertaken to analyze performance status and identify factors
Zone, Oromia Regional State. Both primary and secondary data were used.
The primary data collected from 33 Board of Directors, 99 leaders in General
Assembly and 27 hired staffs/employees using interview schedule, Focus
Group Discussion with members and Key Informant Interview. Both
descriptive statistics and econometric model (Exploratory Factor Analysis of
Structural Equation Modeling) were used in the analysis. The results
revealed that the total averages of financial ratios of Inventory Turnover
Ratio, Operating Ratio, Return on Sales and Current Ratio of sampled unions
had the decreasing trends from 2014/15 to 2015/16. Moreover, Exploratory
Factor Analysis model revealed that age and income were influenced
leadership performance significantly and positively. Additionally, the result
of principal component analysis showed 4 factors were extracted and
statistically significant. The first, second, third and fourth factors were
explained 22.39%, 16.74%, 12.82% and 12.19% of variance respectively.
Holding large stocks in hand and bunching of some years without auditing
cooperative unions were identified as problems. Thus, appropriate authority