Assessing the Role of Leadership on Marketing Performance of Agricultural Cooperative Societies in Tanzania:

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.