Sales organizations are continuously developing new ideas and approaches to be more competitive. One of the approaches taken by most successful organizations is the move from individuals to boundary-spanning, cross-functional teams. Sales teams are being employed to counter efforts by buying organizations to form buying centers. It is proffered in this paper that organizations that are ready for change are conducive to enhancement of sales team learning. Organization readiness for change is a condition impacted by a variety of organizational antecedent variables such as culture and climate. This paper proposes that sales team learning is impacted by team members' perceptions of the organization's readiness for change. In addition, we also posit the moderating influence of two environmental variables: turbulence and competitive intensity on the relationship between readiness for change and sales team learning. Sales team learning is then proposed to be related to a variety of sales outcomes. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework for understanding the contexts in which team learning occurs and the impact of team learning on team effectiveness. Throughout the paper, we present research propositions that provide opportunities for future examinations of team learning.
Management consultants and theorists have long emphasized the need for firms to alter their traditional approaches, experiment with new organizational structures, production processes, and marketing programs, and learn from the successes and failures they encounter when implementing new and different approaches (Fiol & Lyles, 1985). As the rate of business change continues to accelerate, sales organizations face challenging situations like rapid new product developments, corporate restructuring, emerging technologies, and globalization. The demands for handling change are rapidly increasing. One of the approaches taken by many successful sales organizations is the move from individualism to cross-functional, boundary-spanning teamwork (Perry, Pearce, & Sims, 1999). Moore (1994) suggests that such a change helps organizations because the very nature of a formal team allows for the accessibility to “pooled intelligence.” This approach is of particular interest in the area of business-to-business selling. As products and services become more technologically advanced, organizations are moving toward the formation of selling teams that help them stay competitive (Moon & Strong, 1994).
A change-ready organization includes skill-based centers of excellence (Clark, Cavanaugh, Brown, & Sambamurthy, 1997). As sales organizations grow in their use and understanding of teams, it is imperative that they learn how the organization influences sales teams, how sales teams function, how sales teams play a learning role for the sales organization, and what makes sales teams effective. Understanding of learning in teams is a burgeoning but still limited focus of study. However, the growing reliance on sales teams in times of change beckons for understanding of the factors that enable team learning. For example, Edmondson (1999) found that for a team to consistently achieve high levels of performance, its members must actively ask questions, discuss errors, engage in experimentation and reflection, and seek external feedback. In other words, the team must learn. She predicted that teams that were effective at learning would attain better performance. As such, one broad goal of this paper is to address the question “What are the organizational features that will enhance team learning and the corresponding outcomes associated with learning?”
