| The literature suggests that for cooperatives to be successful, they must simultaneously achieve membership participation and acceptable levels of financial performance. This study examines how organizational structural dimensions influence levels of membership participation and financial performance. Organizational structure was operationalized as centralization, formalization, and size. Membership participation was operationalized as members involvement in the cooperative excluding patronage. Financial performance gained from accounting records, included percent operating margins, percent operating expenses and returns on assets.From a sample of 20 cooperatives, (ten federated and ten centralized), eight hypotheses were tested. The data confirm the hypothesis as centralization increases, membership participation decreases. It was also found that cooperative size is positively related to financial performance. The remaining six hypotheses were not supported, which raises several methodological and theoretical questions which are addressed in the last chapter. |
