Leadership effectiveness and competencies of management committee of consumer cooperative societies in Hawassa City, Snnpr, Ethiopia

Effective cooperative leaders matters to the overall performance and well-being of cooperatives. Management committees are members elected by the general assembly to supervise and control the overall business and affairs of cooperatives. Thus, success of any cooperative is determined by the functioning of management committees. The major concern of this study is to measure the leadership effectiveness and competencies of management committees of consumer cooperatives in the study area. For this study, primary data has collected from 263 respondents (i.e. 200 members and 63 management committees from selected12-consumer cooperatives. Descriptive statistics such as mean, frequency and percentages were used for analyzing the data. For measuring the leadership effectiveness of management committees, 31 statements classified under four major indicators considered. The Leadership Effectiveness measured based on members’ perception by using five point Likert scale and the mean score was calculated. The results indicate that management committees of cooperatives were not effective in leading others, leading self, strategic leadership and task management of cooperatives. Regarding leadership competencies, only few cooperative leaders have high experience in leadership and high interest in their leadership; most leaders’ lacks knowledge about cooperation and management. In addition, majority of leaders have better human skills, though they lack conceptual skills and technical skills. Therefore, to improve the leadership effectiveness and competencies of cooperative leaders, leadership training and development programs should be arranged by stakeholders.