Abstract:
The purpose of this research aimed to investigate effects of managers’ professional efficiency and cooperative governance on the business performance of selected Agricultural Multipurpose Cooperative Unions in Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia. Correlational design and descriptive survey were adopted in this study. Both qualitative and quantitative research approaches employed. Samples of 9 cooperative unions were purposively selected out of 98 Agricultural multipurpose cooperative unions in Oromia Regional State and from these selected Agricultural Multipurpose Cooperative Unions 228 total sample size of the individual respondents from managers, board members and employees used for data collection. Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources to achieve the objectives of the study. Data analyzed using descriptive statistics, ratios and multiple regression models. The study found that there is great gap beside managers in teaming skill, leadership skill, in conflict resolution and in practicing cooperative’s good governance pillars in the selected cooperatives. And also the results of the regressed variables figure out that there is significant combined effect of managers’ professional efficiency and cooperative governance on the business performance of the sampled cooperatives variables like technical advice, decision making conflict resolution, team building, communication, leadership, risk management skills and predictability ,transparency, accountability and participation at p-value less than 0.05 probability significant levels. The study findings also revealed that there was implementation of old corporate governance models in a few of cooperative unions which hampers the good governance of cooperatives. Based up on these findings the researcher concluded that the coexisting of professional managers and cooperative good governance are very much important and should equally implemented to have energetic cooperative unions in the business environment in the study area. Therefore, the Woreda, Zonal Cooperative and Regional Promotion Agency must closely follow and supervise the exhaustive implementation of managers’ professional skills, good governance pillars and the synergy in between the elected committees and chief executives in the cooperatives to enhance better business performance
