Scientific Study from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Law, Hawassa University (Post Graduate Study), course: Advanced Legal Research, language: English, abstract: Cooperatives are associations established and managed by private persons in order to address the economic and social needs of their members. Human cooperation is an age-old phenomenon, so much so that one can trace the history of cooperation to the time when people started to live together. Thus, it is difficult to give the credit of origination to this or that society. The earliest cooperative movement is believed to have appeared in Europe in the late 18th and 19th centuries, during the era of the industrial revolution. In Africa, the concept of cooperatives existed long before and during the colonial period, but it flourished in its present form only after independence. An understanding of the status of cooperatives in present-day Ethiopia demands the knowledge of traditional forms of cooperation that existed long ago, as they are the building blocks for the development of cooperatives. Having this general highlight on cooperatives, this paper entails three parts. The first part which is devoted to the general overview of cooperatives deals with the definition, historical background, and various types of cooperatives. In the second part, we shall capitalize on the distinguishing marks of cooperatives from other forms of business organizations and their common features. The last, but not least, part mainly discusses the underlying principles guiding the operation of cooperatives in general and their status in Ethiopian legislation.