Willingness of Egyptian agricultural extension middle level managers to use cell phones in extension services

الملخص EN

The purposes of this study are to: i) assess the agricultural extension middle level managers’ willingness to use cell phones in extension services, and ii) investigate the factors affecting their willingness to change and their change- related behavior.

The DINAMO scale developed by Metselaar (1997) was used to assess their willingness to use cell phones in extension.

Data were collected from 19 agricultural extension middle level managers representing 67.86% of the total number of middle level managers (28 mid-managers) by questionnaire during their annual meeting that was held on May 2015.

Mean scores, percentages, and Chi-square test were used for data presentation and analysis.

The results showed that the respondents’ overall willingness to change is 220.2 which represents 72.2% of the total score; this implies that extension middle level managers are entirely have positive willingness to use cell phones in agricultural extension services.

There are seven variables have significant relationships with extension middle managers’ willingness to change namely: Managers' affective orientation towards the use cell phones in extension (ᵡ2 =38), The value of use cell phones for the agricultural extension organization (ᵡ2 =37.07), Collegial attitudes towards use cell phones in extension (ᵡ2 =38.22), Self-control factors (ᵡ2 =38), External control factors (ᵡ2 =36.24), Control over and contentment with use cell phones in extension (ᵡ2 =24.7), and Perceived complexity of use cell phones in extension (ᵡ2 =31.16).

On the other hand there are five variables affecting the change- related behavior of the middle managers as follows: Managers' affective orientation towards the use cell phones in extension (ᵡ2 =51.19), Collegial attitudes towards use cell phones in extension (ᵡ2 =51.12), External control factors (ᵡ2 =50.34), Control over and contentment with use cell phones in extension (ᵡ2 =25.82), and The middle manager's willingness to use cell phones in extension (ᵡ2 =24.61).

It could be concluded that there is a strong opportunity for using cell phones in extension services, and the respondents are ready for the beginning of such initiative.