Awam M. Karthikeyan
Institute of Cooperatives & Development Studies
Ambo University, Ethiopia
For country striving to escape from poverty the contribution of multipurpose cooperative societies (MPCSs) have dramatic implication in changing the living standards of small farmers by way of social innovation strategies. In order to survive and serve their members, cooperatives must have a strong dedicated and vibrant leadership with social innovation. The study is undertaken with a main objective to assess the determinants that affect cooperative leadership. In this study multi-stage sampling technique was employed. In the first stage, multipurpose cooperative society was selected using purposive sampling technique from all the types of cooperatives.
In the second stage, from the total 18 multi-purpose cooperative societies found in the district, the researcher adopted convenience-sampling technique to identify 9 primary multipurpose cooperative societies as the sampled unit. In the third stage, the researcher adopted census survey method for all members of management committee (63), all members of the control committees (27) and all members of the credit committees (27), amounted to 117. Focus group discussion was conducted among 9 full groups. In addition one individual from audit department and two experts from cooperative promotion department of the district promotion office were selected for key informant interview guided by checklist. The required data were collected and analyzed to assess determinant of cooperative leadership to design social innovation strategies. Bivariate and multivariate analysis of selected variables show that from the fourteen variables entered in to the model four of them show statistically high probability of influence on the dependent variable. These are education, linkage or relationship between committees, incentive and leadership skills. Therefore social innovation strategies designed to enhance the capacity of cooperative leadership should be based on this grounds. From pair wise comparison of high quality and low quality score societies against the determinants of leadership show that keeping all other factors constant age, social participation, media exposure, contact with change agents, training, government intervention, relation among leaders and members and among the committees and leadership skill would make a difference to the quality level of leadership in cooperative societies which lead to social innovation strategies that specific cooperative society needs for specific social innovation strategy.