Measuring the Comprehensive Performance of Rural Production Cooperatives(Case Study: Isfahan province)

The purpose of this research is designing a researcher-made comprehensive measurement tool to assess the performance of rural production cooperatives in Isfahan province. In this descriptive-analytical study, data were collected by questionnaires. The statistical population of this study was the components of rural production cooperatives of Isfahan province that included general assembly, board of directors and investigators. The required data was completed by 375 members of cooperatives. The content validity and construct validity of the seven-dimensional construct of the comprehensive performance were reviewed and confirmed. In this research, Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used and the obtained indices (RMSEA=0.068, CFI=0.987 and TLI=0.976) showed that the model fit of the study was well. Additionally, the performance of rural production cooperatives in Isfahan province was compared for different towns. Based on the factor loadings calculated by AMOS software, among the seven dimensions of the researcher-made comprehensive performance, the dimensions improvement of livelihood and the promotion of the economic power of members (0.855), modifying production system and improving the productivity of production factors (0.809), service activities (0.805), quantitative and qualitative increase in product production (0.786), educational and promotion activities (0.751), allocation and optimal use of resources (0.689) and environmental protection (0.537) had respectively the most weight in building the comprehensive performance structure of rural production cooperatives. Therefore, according to the obtained results, the dimensions improvement of livelihood and the promotion of the economic power of members had the most significant role in evaluating the performance of cooperatives. Additionally, the measurement tool had the ability to predict the financial performance of the cooperatives. Moreover, the results showed that 63.6% of them had good performance.