Farmers’ Cooperative Members’ Perception On Agency Problems And Its Impact On Their Satisfaction In Ethiopia

Nowadays the prevalence of poverty has become a critical challenge of many societies particularly in developing countries.In these countries poverty is sever which has left millions of people out of the basic needs of survival.One of the reasons for the rural households especially smallholder farmers to live in the vicious circle of poverty for long period is lack of strong and sustainable service provider institutions such as marketing service.Due to this,smallholder farmers market their produce individually;they may incur significant losses from their buyers,agricultural inputs suppliers,and general service providers.However,farmers’ cooperatives can solve this problem by bringing institutional change and they are innovative solutions compared to other businesses.On the other hand,the organized cooperatives still did not fill members’ satisfaction according to members’ expectation and Ethiopian cooperatives are not exceptional.The prior researcher identified different evidence for the dissatisfaction of cooperative members.Among the reasons,member perception on agency problems is one of them;even though the researchers identified such issues,the cooperatives did not treated according to their unique nature rather similarly with investor owned firms(IOFs).Therefore the aim of this study is to reconcile these research gaps;hence it explored members’ perception on agency problem and its effect on cooperative members’ satisfaction in Ethiopian agricultural cooperatives.The results confirm that members’ satisfaction on cooperative governance has significant relationship with members’ perception on agency problems in Ethiopia.This study also provides evidence that members’ participation on cooperative governance positively moderate the relationship between perceived agency problems and cooperative members’ satisfaction on their cooperative governance in Ethiopia.Additionally the study identified the indirect effects of agency problems or the mediating role of members trust in management team and members’commitment to their cooperative on the relation between agency problems and members’satisfaction on their cooperative governance.Agency theory was underpin to understand the concepts;this study used the explanatory approach of research and used a cross sectional design for data collection and analysis.For the purpose of this study,the sample cooperative unions and primary cooperatives were chosen purposively;however the sample individual members from each cooperative chosen randomly and it consisted of 4 cooperative unions and 67 primary cooperatives found in Ethiopia.As for the respondents of the sample,they were 201 individual members,each of them received 4I questionnaires;and all questionnaires were returned,which forms 100%of the sample.Thematic analysis used to analysis this study whereas hierarchal multiple regression used to analyze the quantitative data to confirm or reject the hypothesis.Finally,this study has verified further research opportunities that could enrich the understanding of perceived agency problems impact on cooperative members’ satisfaction at Ethiopian farmers’ cooperatives...