Charatsari Chrysanthi, D Lioutas Evagelos, De Rosa Marcello, Papadaki-Klavdianou Afroditi
Department of Agricultural Economics, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece.
School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University, 26335 Patras, Greece.
Animals (Basel). 2020 Nov 6;10(11):2056. doi: 10.3390/ani10112056.
Agricultural digitalization emerged as a radical innovation, punctuating the gradual evolution of the agrifood sector and having the potential to fundamentally restructure the context within which extension and advisory organizations operate. Digital technologies are expected to alter the practice and culture of animal farming in the future. To suit the changing environmental conditions, organizations can make minor adjustments or can call into question their purposes, belief systems, and operating paradigms. Each pattern of change is associated with different types of organizational learning. In this conceptual article, adopting an organizational learning perspective and building upon organizational change models, we present two potential change and learning pathways that extension and advisory organizations can follow to cope with digitalization: morphostasis and morphogenesis. Morphostatic change has a transitional nature and helps organizations survive by adapting to the new environmental conditions. Organizations that follow this pathway learn by recognizing and correcting errors. This way, they increase their competence in specific services and activities. Morphogenetic change, on the other hand, occurs when organizations acknowledge the need to move beyond existing operating paradigms, redefine their purposes, and explore new possibilities. By transforming themselves, organizations learn new ways to understand and interpret contextual cues. We conclude by presenting some factors that explain extension and advisory organizations' tendency to morphostasis.
农业数字化作为一种激进创新而出现，打破了农业食品部门的渐进式发展，并有可能从根本上重构推广和咨询组织的运营环境。数字技术有望在未来改变畜牧养殖的实践和文化。为适应不断变化的环境条件，组织可以进行小幅调整，也可以质疑其目标、信仰体系和运营模式。每种变革模式都与不同类型的组织学习相关联。在这篇概念性文章中，我们采用组织学习视角并基于组织变革模型，提出了推广和咨询组织应对数字化可遵循的两条潜在变革与学习路径：形态稳定和形态发生。形态稳定变革具有过渡性质，通过适应新环境条件帮助组织生存。遵循此路径的组织通过识别和纠正错误来学习。通过这种方式，它们提高在特定服务和活动方面的能力。另一方面，形态发生变革发生在组织认识到需要超越现有运营模式、重新定义其目标并探索新可能性之时。通过自我转型，组织学习理解和解读情境线索的新方法。我们通过阐述一些解释推广和咨询组织倾向于形态稳定的因素来结束本文。
