Operation Organisational Change: Willingness to Co-operate Among Smallholder Fruit and Vegetables Processing Vendors in Tanzania

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The importance of the formal and informal Small and Medium scale Enterprise (SMEs) sector in Tanzania raises stakes of the need to enhance the contribution of the sector in country’s development. Not only the country economy, but also welfare of majority of people who’s their livelihood depends on the performance of such sector. This paper analyses the willingness of smallholder manger-owners of fruit and vegetables processing enterprises in Tanzania to innovate from current individual working framework and form cooperative as innovative working mode for market access. The study involved the field survey, which took place across four regions of Tanzania (Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Coast, and Tanga), and this covered a period of four months. In total, the 130 Fruit and Vegetable Processing (FVP) MSEs were randomly selected and visited to represent the population of small-scale FVP enterprises in Tanzania and the data recorded was then used in analyses. For analysis the econometric method specifically a logistic regression tool is herein used to estimate MSEs manager-owners’ decisions in relation to innovation, meaning change from operation individually to work in cooperation. The result showed that, the willingness to cooperate of surveyed manager-owners is around 79%. Above empirical results impresses that, the smallholder’s fruits and vegetable processors of Tanzania should merge and form cooperatives. This paper identified features associated with their cooperation decision which are MSE’s distance to local government business department, manager-owners age, academic education level, and experience in business activities. Therefore, it was concluded that, diffusion of cooperative working structure in studied community is more likely. In order to diffusion easily cooperative mechanism in studied community, initiatives should start with studied processors of old age, lower general academic education level, and revenue status, as well as those in rural areas that operates far distance to local government business department. This is because such characteristics was found to have positive influence on surveyed manager-owners’ decision regarding working in cooperatives. Generally, this study provides empirical evidence regarding the operational change of the MSEs by estimating their manager-owners’ willingness to work in cooperation. The aim is to help significantly improve the economic development process in Tanzania as a whole.