Journal of Power, Politics & Governance, Vol. 1 No. 1, December 2013
Good Governance Practice for Better Performance of Community Organizations - Myths and Realities!!
R. Dayanandan, PhD
Background
Community organizations
(Cooperatives) are unique institutions that balance and negotiate relationships
between their members, communities, traders, the state and international
commercial traders: social capital facilitates these relationships. According
to Folsom (2002), having a businesses owned and controlled on a cooperative
basis helps farmers’ entire community. Evidence shows that cooperatives enable
farmers to achieve economies of scale, bargaining power and capacity to invest
in more advanced stages of the value chain including storage, processing,
marketing and distribution. Besides, as community institutions, cooperatives
devolve decision making to the community level, build social capital, community
spirit and pride (Reynolds, 1998).
The participation of cooperative
unions in the economic activities is affected by their management capacity,
experience and access to credit. This is due to lack of good governance
practices (Bezabih, 2009). From this, it can be concluded that governance
practice determine the performance of cooperatives in Ethiopia in general and
the study area in particular. The success of cooperatives would depend on the
way that cooperative organization structured and apply good governance
practice, which is the base for members’ participation. Good governance emerges
through honest application of the prevailing laws and respecting the spirit
behind this law (Imran, 2009). Hence, it is imperative to evaluate the existing
governance practice and its impact on the performance of People’s organizations
(Cooperatives).
Formulation of the
problem
- To knowing the selected primary cooperative management practices in the study area?
- To know the level of awareness of the members of the cooperative against good governance practices?
- To know the impact of governance practices on cooperative performance?
- To Know the factors that hamper good governance practices in cooperatives?
Purpose
- To understand the governance practices of selected primary cooperatives in the study area.
- To assess the level of awareness among the cooperative members on good governance practice.
- To examine the impact of such governance practice on the performance of the cooperatives.
- To identify the factors that hinders good governance practice in the cooperatives.
Research methods
Multistage sampling procedure was
followed to select the primary cooperatives and sample members. In the first
stage, from eight types of primary cooperatives, two primary cooperatives from
each type were selected purposively based on seniority of establishment. There
are 1627 members registered in the selected 16 cooperatives. When using
different standard formulae (Kothari, 2004 and Emane, 2000) to arrive sample
size, it becomes more than 300 which are difficult to manage within the limited
time and resource. Hence, Carvalho (1984) table was used to arrive the sample
size. Thus medium size (m) 125 samples had been arrived from the total of 1627
members in the selected cooperatives. Finally proportionate random sampling
technique was used to identify the sample members as respondents. The required
primary data was collected using pre tested semi- structured questionnaires.
The collected data was analysed by Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS
version 20) and descriptive statistics such as mean, percentages and chi square
along with binary logistic regression model were used to arrive the conclusion.
Conclusion
The findings indicate that
inadequate business participation, poor responsiveness, lack of awareness about
the management, lack of democracy, corruption, poor sense of ownership, double
responsibility and lack of members’ awareness were found to be the reasons for
weak performance. The binary logistic regression model results show that, four
predictor variables such as participation, accountability, transparency and
rule of law are found to be significant on the impact of cooperative
performance which needs due attention of the concerned stake holders to
maintain good governance practice. It is suggested that the identified problems
would be addressed through collaborative and deliberate action of both members
and the government.
Reference
R. Dayanandan, PhD .(2013). Good
Governance Practice for Better Performance of Community Organizations - Myths
and Realities. Journal of Power, Politics & Governance, Vol. 1.