Paper Title
Assessing Organizational Readiness for Change in the Agro-Food Sector: Effect on Perceived Benefits

Abstract
An organizational readiness for change (ORC) is a measurement of the preparedness of a company to undergo and adopt a major change through the introduction of new management strategies and new projects. The goal is to find out if the company has enough resources and it is ready to accomplish the work. ORC is an important factor in successful implementation of new policies, programs, and practices, its assessment offers the guarantee to know if the company will successfully adopt the change or it is not ready to be engaged and on how the company should work to improve its resources and consequently its readiness. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the organizational readiness of small and medium sized firm operating in the sector of labelled products to join a future innovative cluster by exploring how organizational readiness relates to innovative projects, perceived benefits for firm. Organizational readiness for change was measured by three dimensions, namely, organizational culture, climate and motivation. Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied to assess the effect of organizational readiness dimensions on the outcomes perceived of 70 firms producing labelled products in Morocco. Results obtained indicate a positive and significant effect of organizational motivation on the perceived benefits by reducing production costs when working together through innovative projects. Analyses also show a positive effect of organizational climate and culture, however the effect was not strong enough to be significant, which explains that apart from motivation, firms are not really ready to adopt new changes by integrating a new service cluster and cooperate together so as to develop innovative projects. The study reveals the existence of a relationship between organizational readiness and perceived benefits. The findings give an overview of organizational readiness in the labelled products sector in the context of new cluster establishment, which can serve as a basis for future research. since the study focuses on a very specific sector integrating mostly SMEs, the results must be used with caution, any generalization must take into account the socio-economic characteristics of the companies. This study presents a novelty by examining the readiness of companies producing labelled product to join an innovative cluster and determining the critical role of each dimension of organizational readiness on firm benefits.