Purpose Drawing upon stewardship and resource-based view theories, the purpose of this study is to empirically examine the impacts of management committee effectiveness (MCE), member economic participation (MEP), innovation (INNOV) and internal control systems (ICS) on the performance of employee-based savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a survey research design. Thus, a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 295 members of six employee-based SACCOs in Nigeria. To test the study hypotheses, partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), through SmartPLS version 2, was used. Findings The results show that MCE, MEP, INNOV and ICS have significant positive links with the performance of employee-based SACCOs. Further analysis reveals that MCE has the greatest impact on performance, followed by MEP, ICS and INNOV, respectively. Practical implications The findings provide practical and managerial implications for members and management committees of employee-based SACCOs. Originality/value There is a paucity of studies on the impacts of MCE, MEP, INNOV and ICS on cooperative performance. This study contributes to the literature on cooperatives by demonstrating the positive impacts of MCE, MEP, INNOV and ICS on cooperative performance in a single study.