THE STRUCTURAL EMPOWERMENT AND LEVELS OF PARTICIPATION OF CO-OPERATIVE MEMBERS

Abstract

Co-operative members’ participation is one of key factors in the existence of co-operatives. It is even considered that without participation, co-operatives members lose their identity and disperse. The purpose of this study was to measure empirically the differences in the structural empowerment of credit co-operative members in terms of the levels of participation. This study involved 302 co-operative members as participants who were purposively selected using purposive sampling method. The One Way ANOVA was used to test the hypothesis in this research. It was found that there are differences in the mean score of the structural empowerment of co-operatives based on the levels of participation. Members with a very active level of participation achieved the highest mean score while those with inactive level of participation were ranked the lowest in the mean score. The more active the members are, the higher their positive perception of the co-operative structure is. The co-operative structure can be regarded as an external environment that can empower the co-operative members provided that the members must actively participate.