Agroholdings in the East German Länder: an Adaptation to Complex Organisational Environments

In recent decades, new forms of agricultural organisation have received increasing attention, in which individual agricultural enterprises are vertically or horizontally integrated into larger business networks (holdings). This paper addresses ‘agroholdings’ as an organisational pattern that is gaining importance in the East German Länder. To explain the phenomenon, we adopted the approach of new sociological institutionalism, which considers the emergence of new organisational forms as a cultural change. The theoretical assumptions of this approach are largely confirmed in regional case studies conducted in East Germany. This approach is a promising way to analyse the current structural change in agriculture.