Determinants of Business Cooperatives’ Success in North Gondar Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract

Cooperatives have been promoted in many developing countries including Ethiopia to address issues such as; unemployment, rural development, and as a means of creating income-generating activities, especially to the poor community. Although many studies have examined various key issues contributing to the success of cooperatives, lower consideration is given to the determinants of cooperative’s success and the researcher has directed his concerns towards the study of determinants for the cooperative’ssuccess in North Gondar of Ethiopia in thisparticular study. To undertake the research, 272 business cooperatives operating in North Gondar Zone have been included in the sample and questioner, interview,and focus group discussions were used as a tool for data collection. The collected data were analyzed through multiple linear regression model and the result shows that cooperative success measured by cooperative’s profitability has a statistically significant positive relation with group savings, rate of loan repayment, membership fees, financial stability, and business volume. In contrast, cooperative’s success has a statistically significant negative relation with the size of the membership in business cooperatives operating in North Gondar Zone.Finally, it was recommended that cooperative managers need to focus on the factors which are significantly affecting cooperatives success.