ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION DIMENSIONS AND INCOME GENERATION OF MULTIPURPOSE COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES IN NORTH-CENTRAL, NIGERIA

Co-operative societies are regarded as a business model with capability to provide economic and social sustainability. Despite their significance, the co-operative societies have been marred with several challenges such as loan delinquency, getting loans over their maximum credit limit which hinder their performance. This paper therefore aimed to examined how entrepreneurial orientation dimensions affect the income generation capacity of multipurpose co-operative societies in North-Central, Nigeria. Specific objectives were to: examine the effect of entrepreneurial pro-activeness orientation on performance of cooperative societies; investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial innovative capacity orientation and performance of cooperative societies A sample size of 373 was drawn from 12,671 population using Taro Yamane formula. Questionnaire were administered out of which 383 were retrieved. Multiple regression was used in the analysis. Descriptive analysis indicated that entrepreneurial orientation dimensions measured were evenly distributed. Therefore, the result of multiple regression analysis indicated that there is significant positive influence between entrepreneurial orientation determinants (innovative capacity. with β=0.132, t-value=2.483 and p-value=0.013; pro-activeness with β=0.372, t-value=6.329 and p-value=0.000 and performance of the antecedents of cooperative society (which is measured by income generation. The study found that one out of two proposed null hypotheses have significant impact on the income generation of cooperative societies. These findings showed that entrepreneurial orientation play an essential role through innovative capacity and pro-activeness, and it has significant influence on the income generation of cooperative societies. The study concluded that cooperative societies improve growth of income generation through entrepreneurial orientation which help their members in the area of investment decision as well as avoid loan delinquency. It was recommended that cooperative societies should focuses on Innovative capacity to ensure income generation, and more emphases should have laid on pro-activeness.