Organisational readiness to participate in a labelled product service cluster: a structural equation model analysis

In the present competitive environment, organisations must inevitably progress to gain and maintain a long-term competitive advantage. Hence, organisations must embrace organisational readiness for change (ORC), which denotes the level of preparedness of an organisation to adopt a change through deploying new management strategies and new projects. This study evaluated the ORC of 70 Moroccan SMEs involved in the sector of labelled agri-food products to join a future innovative cluster. Three dimensions were employed to measure ORC, namely organisational culture, motivation, and climate. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to examine the impact of ORC dimensions on the perceived benefits for the firm. The findings demonstrate that the human factor appeared to be more favourably disposed to change. Organisational motivation displayed a significantly positive effect on perceived benefits through minimising production costs when working together in innovative projects. Despite this, the impact of organisational climate and culture was insignificant. This shows that the selected firms need more support to adopt new changes through integrating a new service cluster and, cooperating together in innovative projects. Our study may support SMEs, policymakers, and researchers in devising guidelines that promote better practices for the agro-food SMEs to function effectively.