How is Unlearning Enabled in Sales Organisations? Unlearning in ACT;ION

Abstract

B2B selling environments are characterised by increased complexities from transparent procurement ‘buy modes’. These drive B2B buying sophistication and aggressiveness and corporate buyers demand suppliers who have a deep knowledge of their business and heterogenous sales approaches. Additionally and importantly, buyer expectations require sales professionals to abandon outmoded behaviour. Yet, unlearning is given little attention in sales organisation literature, even less to unlearning’s enablement. Mechanisms for sales unlearning are important because sales organisations need to comprehend which existing knowledge and embedded routines to discard in favour of aligned new knowledge and practices, as well as when to do this. The purpose of the research is therefore to provide a theoretical and practical framework to sales organisations that can support their sales professionals in challenging and potentially discarding generalist and routinised sales work, in order to adopt heterogenous and aligned sales constructs. The study is based on observations of 57 participants (actors) within four UK publishing case organisations. Pragmatism’s foundational principles underpin this qualitative multi-method longitudinal research, and to get close to actors’ real-world experience, the methodological choice includes action research. Pragmatism’s abduction, and in line with sales research practice, grounded theory coding forwards warranted assertions. The data from participant observations are analysed to develop theory and practice on how sales unlearning is enabled in the quest for sustainable sales performance. The thesis contributes to increased understanding of individuals’ responses to unlearning and to aligning the temporal dimensions to unlearning and types of unlearning mechanisms required. The main contribution of this research is the development of a new conceptual framework to understand how individual unlearning occurs which forms the core concept in a substantive theory: The ACT;ION Model. The model integrates the findings to reveal how unlearning is enabled in sales organisations.

Date of Award	4 Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Juani Swart (Supervisor) & Nancy Harding (Supervisor)