Leadership in the fishing cooperative in Mexico

The need to compete and grow encourages changes in organizations. In the fishing camps are created cooperatives, which know the reality of the environment and work with the aim of contributing to the development and progress of the fishermen and their communities. It is fundamental the role of its leaders, who have a responsibility to promote change in attitude and teamwork, to achieve personal and collective goals. This paper presents preliminary results of a larger study which main objective was to identify the type of leadership that dominates in the management of the Sinaloa fishing cooperatives. The study was conducted under the qualitative paradigm; data collection was carried out with semi-structured interviews with managers and former directives of fishing cooperatives located in central Sinaloa, complemented by the application of a questionnaire covering their socioeconomic profile.

The main findings show that managers are fishermen, cooperative members, elected by the General Assembly as the highest organ of administration, with an average age from 35 to 45 years old, with basic school grades. They know about the productive activity of artisanal fisheries and occupy the job of president of the board in periods of 2-3 years without administrative preparation to run them. Regarding the predominant style of leadership, managers of fishing cooperatives say their efforts are focused on the development of organizational tasks such as setting goals and targets for each fishing season. In relation with the development of human relationships among members of the cooperative, indicate that their main concern is the quality of mutual relations and the level of involvement of partners, and with that in mind they implement strategies for the integration and participation in the opinions and decision making for the members. With the above it is concluded that managers of fishing cooperatives are young fishermen who run the organization with little training for the development of their job and they practice predominantly a style of democratic leadership, because they promote the participation of partners in both contribution of opinions as in decision making, strengthening the trust deposited in him at the time of his election as leader.