Awam Sushila Devi Rajaratnam,
Nurizah Noordin,
Mohd Shahron Anuar Said,
Rafedah Juhan
Farahaini Mohd Hanif
Co-operative College of Malaysia
This paper explored the success factors of cooperatives in Malaysia as a study of this nature had not been attempted previously. Questionnaires were distributed using the purposive sampling method to obtain the perception of respondents from cooperatives. Responses from a sample of 203 respondents was then analysed using exploratory factor analysis. A total of five factors were extracted using the principal component method with a varimax rotation. The five factor rotated solution explained a total of 63.84 percent of the variance and all the factors had acceptable reliability. The five factors were labelled as visionary leadership, managerial competency, stability, functional characteristics and operational efficiency. Group mean scores were then calculated for the five factors to determine their importance in determining the success of cooperatives. Based on the group mean scores, only four factors were found to be important and they are visionary leadership, managerial competency, functional characteristics and stability.