Leadership and Performance Status of Agricultural Cooperative Unions: The Case of Arsi Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia

The study was undertaken to analyze performance status and identify factors Zone, Oromia Regional State. Both primary and secondary data were used. The primary data collected from 33 Board of Directors, 99 leaders in General Assembly and 27 hired staffs/employees using interview schedule, Focus Group Discussion with members and Key Informant Interview. Both descriptive statistics and econometric model (Exploratory Factor Analysis of Structural Equation Modeling) were used in the analysis. The results revealed that the total averages of financial ratios of Inventory Turnover Ratio, Operating Ratio, Return on Sales and Current Ratio of sampled unions had the decreasing trends from 2014/15 to 2015/16. Moreover, Exploratory Factor Analysis model revealed that age and income were influenced leadership performance significantly and positively. Additionally, the result of principal component analysis showed 4 factors were extracted and statistically significant. The first, second, third and fourth factors were explained 22.39%, 16.74%, 12.82% and 12.19% of variance respectively. Holding large stocks in hand and bunching of some years without auditing cooperative unions were identified as problems. Thus, appropriate authority