Financial and Employment Performance of Active Cooperative Societies in Fars Province

In recent years, a positive and substantial growth in cooperative enterprises is observable which is why governments have increasingly turned to this kind of firms. But, in view of the investments required, the main question is whether a growth in the cooperative sector will meet the needs of the society, or what have been the results of such a growth in terms of resolving the problems and difficulties such as unemployment, and growing productivity and performance? This paper, studies the relationship between investments, employment and financial performance of active cooperative enterprises of Fars province. The statistical population of this study includes all of the active cooperative enterprises of Fars province (4512 firms). Based on the considered restrictions to select the samples, 120 firms were selected from the population on the basis of the classified random sampling method during the period 1384 to 1389 The findings show that there is a significant difference betweenemployment of the different groups in cooperative enterprises, based on their financial performance and the field of their activities. Aggregately, the better financial performance in the agricultural, industrial and service sectors respectively, has lead to higher rate of employment. Therefore the weaker the financial performance of the firms in these sectors, the lower the employment rate.