Journal of Co-operative Studies, 51(2), 29-36

Abstract

Study on youth involvement has received enormous attention by researchers and practitioners over the decades. Evidently, past research revealed that youth plays a significant role in determining the success of the programmes and policy executed by the government. Youth involvement in co‑operatives in Malaysia has been a feature which is hardly given the recognition it deserves. They tend to see co-operatives as uninteresting organisations, and only a few take advantages of co‑operative opportunities. Hence, it affects the role of youth in the co-operative movement. On the other hand, their involvement in co-operatives is still unsatisfactory. As reported, there were only 205 youth co-operatives with 25,202 memberships. Therefore, the significance of this study lies in examining the factors that lead to the participation of youth in co-operatives and to describe the types of involvement. Using a quantitative approach, data were collected via a questionnaire distributed among the sample of respondents who are the Board of Directors (BOD) or currently working as a manager in a co-operative. Purposive sampling technique was employed and 300 respondents were pre-determined. The result shows that interest contributed to the highest factor that leads to youth participation in co-operatives. Apart from that, the leadership contributed to the highest factor that leads to the youth involvement in top management in co-operative.

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