What is it about?
In this article, we examine how the transition to selling sustainable solutions creates tensions within the sales organization and across associated organizations, including suppliers and customers. Specifically, we examine the existing literature that has focused on how tensions arise within an organization during times of change and use this lens to identify potential challenges facing the sales function when tasked with selling sustainable solutions. We analyze how tensions manifest within the sales function (vertical tensions) and between sales and other departments, as well as between suppliers and buyers (horizontal tensions). The article demonstrates that sustainability tensions, unlike other literature streams, are an underexplored topic in the B2B sales literature, presenting avenues for future research. Building on a review of the literature on sustainability in other disciplines, we develop a research agenda that …
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Why is it important?
In this article, we examine how the transition to selling sustainable solutions creates tensions within the sales organization and across associated organizations, including suppliers and customers. Specifically, we examine the existing literature that has focused on how tensions arise within an organization during times of change and use this lens to identify potential challenges facing the sales function when tasked with selling sustainable solutions. We analyze how tensions manifest within the sales function (vertical tensions) and between sales and other departments, as well as between suppliers and buyers (horizontal tensions). The article demonstrates that sustainability tensions, unlike other literature streams, are an underexplored topic in the B2B sales literature, presenting avenues for future research. Building on a review of the literature on sustainability in other disciplines, we develop a research agenda that …
Perspectives
In this article, we examine how the transition to selling sustainable solutions creates tensions within the sales organization and across associated organizations, including suppliers and customers. Specifically, we examine the existing literature that has focused on how tensions arise within an organization during times of change and use this lens to identify potential challenges facing the sales function when tasked with selling sustainable solutions. We analyze how tensions manifest within the sales function (vertical tensions) and between sales and other departments, as well as between suppliers and buyers (horizontal tensions). The article demonstrates that sustainability tensions, unlike other literature streams, are an underexplored topic in the B2B sales literature, presenting avenues for future research. Building on a review of the literature on sustainability in other disciplines, we develop a research agenda that …
Dr Omar S. Itani
Lebanese American University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Emerging tensions in selling sustainable solutions: a future research agenda, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, January 2026, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/08853134.2025.2608588.
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