SOURCE:

Faculty: Management Sciences
Department: Co-opreative Economics And Management

CONTRIBUTORS:

Lawal, K. A. A.
Umebali, E.E.

ABSTRACT:

The study determined to analyze the Influence of cooperative society’s entrepreneurial activities on the performance of cooperative members’ enterprises in Lagos State. The specific objectives were to determine the influence of entrepreneurial business ideas on enterprise income; determine the influence of innovative business skills on enterprise income; examine the influence of entrepreneurial business ideas on working capital growth; and determine the influence of innovative business skills on working capital growth. The researcher used multistage sampling technique to select sample size of 436 entrepreneurs who are members of cooperative societies in selected business zones of Lagos state. Data obtained from these selected entrepreneurs were analysed with appropriate statistical tools. As such, findings from the study revealed that the majority of the respondents’ business enterprises are sole proprietorship form of business and they are not registered with the appropriate authority in Lagos state. The evidence from the findings (grand mean (̅x) = 3.662) revealed that the respondents agreed that most of the innovative business ideas and entrepreneurial skills are been acquired through their cooperative societies. Findings revealed the respondents earn average of ₦418,627.331 as the annual income from their enterprise. The correlation value (0.984) of hypothesis (Ho2) tested revealed that, positive relationship exists between the variables of interest (skills & Income). This implied that the entrepreneurial ideas and skills acquired by the cooperative members from their cooperative society have significantly improved members enterprise income. Also, the probability value of 0.032) of the hypothesis (Ho3) tested affirmed that, working capital is dependent of skills. That is, working capital has significant relationship with the skills acquired by the members from their cooperative society. The result (grand mean (̅x) = 3.812) from the study revealed that entrepreneurs in Lagos state are being confronted by various challenges. In order to enhance the performance of members’ enterprise the following recommendations are made by the researcher; the cooperative societies involved in the entrepreneur activities should think outside the box by coming up with more entrepreneurs strategies that will increase the skills and business ideas of their members. As a matter of necessity, the cooperative societies should partner other private firms and the government so as close the gap of business innovations between the cooperative members business. The cooperative societies involved in entrepreneurial activities should not only give or render these entrepreneurial skills and ideas to their members enterprise rather they do a follow up to track the performance of the of their members enterprise so as to ascertain and detect if they are making progress with the ideas giving to them or not. In order to increase the working capital, sales turnover and the fixed assets of the members’ enterprises the cooperative society should endeavour to increase the amount of credit facilities they give to their members. The challenges like shortage power supply, unfavourable government policies and traffic jams should urgently be looked at the government. These are some of the factors that contribute to poor business performance and high cost of operating business in Lagos state. Therefore, the government should permanently solve these issues or provide palliative strategies that will cushion the effects of these factors on small-scale enterprises. Solution to this problem will automatically improve the performance of cooperative enterprise.