Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to assess the the role of leadership in marketing performance
of cotton Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Societies in Maswa district Council. The
independent variables within the framework are transformational leadership and transactional
leadership styles and the dependent variable is marketing performance. The research used
descriptive-correlation study design with quantitative approach. A probability sampling
technique using simple random sampling procedure was used to select 102 AMCOS members
as suggested by (Kumar, 2016) from the 80 AMCOS in Maswa District Council at least one from
each cooperative society. The main data collection instrument was questionnaire. The
objectives of the study were achieved through statistical analysis procedure by estimating
means, standard deviation, frequency, and correlation. The empirical results showed that there
is commitment of leadership in search for reliable price and motivation of farmers to maintain
productivity with mean scores of 4.84 and 4.76 respectively with more transactional leadership
styles. Again 68% of respondents perceived that AMCOS leadership style face the challenge of
coordination failure and 59.8% said there is administrative challenge which plays greater role in
marketing performance of cooperative societies. Finally, transformational leadership style
exerts more influence on price search while transactional leadership is more influential on both
price search, customers search and financial integrity. Following the findings and conclusion
made, it was recommended that leadership should embark on more training on how to
coordinate, administer and market agricultural crops to enhance more marketing performance
particularly in the areas of members’ participation and administering sales revenue of members.
In conclusion, generalizing these findings for all cooperative societies may require further
investigation.
