Corporate governance and marketing performance of agricultural marketing cooperative societies in Uganda; Case study: Namungalwe Area Cooperative Enterprise, Iganga district.

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between corporate governance and marketing performance of agricultural marketing cooperative societies, with Namungalwe Area Cooperative Enterprise Ltd (NACE) as the case study. The study objectives were; to examine the effect of corporate planning on marketing performance of agricultural marketing cooperative societies; to assess the effect of corporate staff control on marketing performance of agricultural marketing cooperative societies; and to examine the effect of corporate accountability on marketing performance of agricultural marketing cooperative societies. This research was mainly guided by the Agency theory of corporate governance, supported by stakeholder and resource dependency theories. A case study research design was used for this research. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select a representative sample of 66 respondents out of a population of 80 people using Krejcie and Morgan (1970) table. Structured questionnaires and interview methods were used to collect primary data, backed up by literature review to obtain secondary data. The following results were obtained; Findings of this study established that corporate planning role of the board is positively and significantly related with marketing performance of NACE with a correlation coefficient of 0.720. Results indicated a positive significant relationship between corporate staff control and marketing performance with a correlation coefficient of 0.724. It was also established that there was a significant positive relationship between corporate accountability and marketing performance of NACE with a correlation coefficient of 0.780. Corporate accountability was found to have the strongest relationship with the marketing performance of NACE since it produced the highest correlation coefficient of all the three. Recommendations of the study were made as follows; NACE’s board should put in place mechanisms to own up, take full charge and streamline corporate planning to enhance marketing performance; the government department regulating cooperatives and the cooperative Apex body (Uganda Cooperative Alliance) should design and implement tailor-made trainings for board members in areas of strategic planning in order to ably take on the responsibility and best practices of corporate planning that contribute to the desired marketing performance of their organisations; NACE’s board should develop a system of assigning performance targets to the management staff of NACE and utilize them to follow up and monitor staff performance with particular emphasis on enhancement of marketing performance and strengthen good corporate accountability practices like instituting and functionalizing internal audit committees.