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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major sales strategy and process changes as many interactions migrated from face-to-face to virtual environments. The nature of the interactions changed, and sales firms, the sales function and salespeople created new processes to excel in virtual environments. As sales processes evolve further, this paper aims to focus on understanding the enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes. In addition, this study seeks to understand the characteristics of enduring shifts and how they are distinct from temporary shifts.

This qualitative analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the sales organizations and salespeople over the period from the start of the pandemic to early 2022. The authors interviewed 66 sales professionals from different countries and industries to better understand the temporary and enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes, adopting ad inductive and narrative approach.

There are four major findings. First, four key themes emerged: increased digitalization, resistance to digitalization, sales process changes and sales organization transformation. Second, changes are classified as temporary, permanent and accelerated changes. Third, some proposed changes were not supported. Finally, five findings were found that were not discussed in previous literature.

This paper finds distinctive findings that offer additional valuable insights that connect to and extend existing literature. These include emerging themes, classification shifts, unsupported proposed changes and unique findings.

This study aims to identify the changes in different selling situations/styles during and post-COVID scenarios.

To attain the above-mentioned objective, a qualitative study drawn upon the principles of the theories-in-use approach is conducted. The data were collected through 23 in-depth semistructured interviews, conducted with professional salespeople working at various levels in different industries. The data thus generated was analyzed through open, axial and selective coding, which resulted in three broad categories of changes in professional selling.

The findings of the study suggest that though sales jobs are perceived to be similar in nature, but there are differences in how various selling jobs are being performed. The same is the case with the effect of the pandemic on sales jobs. The authors found that every selling style faced a different challenge due to the pandemic and so is the case for the salespeople engaged in the respective selling practice.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research of its kind that has focused on the differences in various selling styles. Though the recent academic literature on personal selling does manifest the effect of the pandemic. But, in doing so, these studies have presented “personal selling” as an overarching concept encompassing all types of selling and have failed to differentiate between the various nuances of personal selling which include trade selling, technical selling, new-business selling and missionary selling.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the drivers of business-to-business (B2B) sales success and the role of digitalization, in a selling and sales management landscape being disrupted by COVID-19.

The methodology follows a discovery-oriented grounded theory approach, which consists of a two-stage qualitative study with sales professionals in Chile, and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

This research shows that interfunctional coordination, agility in the selling process and business customer engagement are critical determinants of B2B sales success, whereas digitalization moderates these relationships.

This research responds to a call for more research on the impact of digitalization on business relationships in different contexts and perspectives. The authors study the Chilean context, through a two-stage qualitative study, and a fsQCA analysis, which constitutes a novel combination in this stream of research.

The COVID pandemic has prompted B2B and industrial marketing scholars to understand more about how external disruptions impact parties involved in B2B transactions. This paper aims to adopt an ecosystem perspective to conceptually classify the interactions between actors involved in B2B ecosystems.

This conceptual paper presents a framework across multiple levels of ecosystem interactions (at micro, meso and macrolevels) to illustrate how value cocreation and knowledge flows (as mechanisms underlying B2B relationships) are related to firm performance.

Based on this framework, this paper offers propositions and several research questions about the effects of disruptions and how they propagate among these essential business ecosystem elements.

This conceptual framework underscores the vital role of relationships and interactions in shaping B2B ecosystems, especially during disruptive periods. With a greater understanding of how these interactions operate across levels (micro, meso and macro), scholars and practitioners may be better able to navigate disruptive periods.

This study aims to use stewardship theory to investigate the effect of responsible leadership (RL) on organisational citizenship behaviour for the environment (OCBE) through the mediatory role of environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR).

Data was collected from a sample of 224 individuals employed in the manufacturing sector of Pakistan. The study used partial least squares structural equation modelling to estimate the relationships within the model.

The findings indicate that RL positively impacts OCBE, and ECSR is a partial mediator that mediates the relationship between RL and OCBE.

This research offers novel perspectives for organisational leaders, highlighting the significance of RL quality for instilling OCBE among the employees of manufacturing sectors. Organisational leaders must prioritise ECSR in their CSR initiatives.

This study’s novelty lies in confirming the mediating role of ECSR to drive the positive impact of RL on OCBE through stewardship theory.

The study explores the current research trends within the responsible leadership (RL) domain and proposes a future research agenda by conducting an extensive review of past research. The study aims to understand recent developments in theories, constructs and contexts in RL literature.

Scopus database is used for the data collection on RL and patterns from 1998–2022. In total, 138 articles were covered for a systematic literature review (SLR) of RL behaviors. Further, the search was extended, and 109 more articles were included for bibliometric analysis of RL using R software. In total, 247 papers were reviewed.

The results present the consequences and antecedents of RL behaviors with external and internal stakeholders. Literature also indicates that researchers are more attentive to empirical studies with internal stakeholders, such as responsible leaders' impact on employee outcomes. Among theories, stakeholder theory's normative integrative and instrumental perspectives are used with RL.

The first limitation of the study is that this study collected data only from the Scopus database and the choice of language was English. Future studies may use other databases, languages and keywords. Instrumental and integrative RL behavioral styles would help balance organizations' financial and social goals.

This research enhances the literature on RL by combining content and bibliometric analysis to develop a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of integrative and instrumental leadership behaviors.

The digital transformation is dramatically changing the business-to-business (B2B) sales environment, challenging long-standing views regarding the critical competencies required of salespeople. This paper aims to explore the personal traits associated with sales performance in a digital selling environment.

Using template analysis, the researchers captured and coded over 21 h of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior sales leaders from various industry sectors, exploring their perceptions of the personal traits now required of B2B salespeople in the digital landscape.

The research identifies three high-level trait types critical to sales success within a digital selling environment: “analytical curiosity” – the natural motivation and ability to gather and synthesize sales-related knowledge, “empathetic citizenship” – the ability to establish initial rapport while building long-term trust and “disciplined drive” – the exertion of selling effort in a highly focused and methodical manner across all stages of the sales process.

The present data came from interviews with sales leaders in Canada. A more global sample may lead to additional insights. Moreover, the sample was drawn from long-cycle B2B sales environments; conclusions may differ for short-cycle or business-to-consumer markets.

This paper presents a framework for hiring and developing salespeople in the digital sales environment, identifying personal trait types that sales leaders should look for when hiring: analytical curiosity, empathetic citizenship and disciplined drive. The paper identifies how these trait types influence sales success, suggesting that sales leaders could coach and educate their teams to make the best use of them.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for hiring in the digital sales environment and introduces the trait of analytical curiosity not previously discussed in the literature.

This study aims to use cognitive appraisal theory to explain how organizational disruption influences the development of envy resulting in unethical selling practices, turnover intentions and a reduction in customer orientation that causes disruption to impact customer relationships. This research helps to address drivers of salesperson envy, the potential disruptions to customer relationships and the required need to invest in psychological resources to offset these negative effects.

A total of 211 salespeople were surveyed to test the hypotheses. First, the measurement model was validated using a confirmatory factor analysis. Next, the hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling AMOS 27. Mediation and moderated mediation were tested using the bootstrap method. Estimands were created within AMOS to test the indirect and interaction effects in the full model. A post hoc analysis further informed the findings.

The results show that the development of envy increases under conditions of organizational disruptions, leading to potential customer disruptions through turnover intentions, unethical selling behaviors and a reduction in customer orientation. In addition, the mediation analysis shows that envy drives the relationship between organizational disruption and unethical selling, turnover intentions and customer orientation through fully mediated relationships. Finally, the interaction effects between organizational disruption and psychological capital show high levels of psychological capital help to decrease the development of envy, thus reducing unethical selling behaviors and turnover intentions while increasing customer orientation.

The study provides practitioners with insights into how to reduce envy by investing in the psychological capital of their salesforce. The study also provides suggestions for handling disruptions and managing envy to prevent actions that act to damage customer relationships.

Salespeople are likely to encounter organizational disruption. Sales managers need to be prepared to manage the outcomes of organizational disruption as it impacts the sales force. Understanding how disruptions impact customer relationships through envy is an important yet under-explored topic. This research adds to and expands the sales literature using cognitive appraisal theory to help address drivers of salesperson envy and its potentially negative impact on customer relationships and shows the required need to invest in psychological resources to offset these negative effects. The study also helps expand the recent focus on worldwide disruptions by adopting another context for disruption stemming from organizational disruption.

This research focuses on exploring a psychological mechanism between abusive supervision and job engagement via job insecurity and job alternative to understand how frontline construction workers' perceived abusive supervision impacts on their work engagement.

This study draws on the conservation of resources theory (COR) to postulate that workers' job insecurity acts as a mediation between abusive supervision and work engagement, and the perception of job alternative moderates the impact of abusive supervision on job insecurity. This study empirically tests survey data from 357 frontline construction workers and adopts partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the proposed model.

This paper proved the dark-side of abusive supervision, dual character of job insecurity and moderating role of job alternative. The game-changing mediation effects of job insecurity were examined, which suggested that work engagement would be higher when abusive supervision stimulates stronger job insecurity. Furthermore, the result indicated that the relationship between abusive supervision and job insecurity should be weaker when job alternative is high.

This research suggests construction project managers (CPMs) must take steps such as enhancing supervisors' emotional management skills to control frequency of abuse and thus lessen compromising engagement. Moreover, overall understanding frontline workers' job insecurity is meaningful for better construction performance management.

This research contributes to the disputed leadership style (abusive supervision) and positive psychology knowledge (work engagement) in construction projects by unveiling the psychosocial mechanism (game-changing effects of job insecurity) of construction frontline workers positive engaged feeling. This study highlights the function of personal and job resources in process of resource conservation.

This study investigates the relationship between responsible leadership (RL) and employee sustainable performance (ESP), utilizing the CSR theory as a theoretical framework. Furthermore, this study aims to examine the role of ethical climate as a potential mediator in the relationship between RL and ESP.

A sample of 415 employees from the healthcare sector of India was collected through a questionnaire-based survey by using the convenience sampling technique. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with the help of SmartPLS 4.

The study's findings demonstrated a significant, positive association between RL and ESP [employee well-being (EWB) and employee performance (EP)]. Additionally, the findings show that ethical climate partially mediates the link between RL and ESP (EWB and EP).

The generalizability of the study's data collection is limited because it is based on the responses of Indian healthcare sector employees to an online and offline survey. The authors propose that the healthcare industry implement an intensive leadership training program in light of the findings of this study, which will aid human resource (HR) managers in comprehending the significance of RL and fostering related behaviors, such as encouraging employees to maintain ethical behavior and positive attitudes.

To the authors' understanding, this study is among the earliest attempts to present an integrative model that examines the relationship between RL, ethical climate and ESP in the context of Indian healthcare employees, incorporating the theory of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Moreover, the novelty of this research study examines the relationship between RL and ESP, with an ethical climate serving as a mediator. The focus is specifically on employees working in the Indian healthcare sector.