Current Job Title and Company

Lecturer at UCN, Aalborg and external lecturer at AAU Business School

How did my interest in my research field arise?

Before entering academia, I spent 18 years working in business, sales, and consultancy, primarily within B2B environments. Through my work with companies and B2B sales teams, I observed that the sales profession was becoming increasingly complex. Traditional sales processes no longer seemed sufficient, and I became curious about how these changes were affecting salespeople, their roles, and the way they collaborated with others across within and across organizations.

When I transitioned into higher education as a lecturer in sales and communication, I found myself asking a practical question: How do we prepare future sales professionals for a role that is changing so rapidly? That question sparked my research journey and eventually led to my PhD, where I explored how sales teams adapt when changing business environments disrupt established roles, responsibilities, and patterns of collaboration.

What am I most passionate about in my work?

What motivates me most is connecting research, teaching, and practice. Having spent many years in industry before entering academia, I have always been interested in research that addresses real-world challenges and creates value beyond academic discussions.

I am particularly passionate about understanding how sales professionals and sales teams navigate change. Organizations are facing increasing complexity due to sustainability requirements, digitalization, evolving customer expectations, and new business models. I find it fascinating to explore how people adapt, redefine their roles, and learn to collaborate in new ways when established ways of working no longer fit their environment.

Equally important to me is bringing these insights back into the classroom. One reason I embarked on a PhD was to become a better educator and provide students with relevant, research-based knowledge that prepares them for the realities they will encounter in their future careers.

I also enjoy sharing research findings with practitioners. One of the proudest moments in my PhD journey was seeing people from industry, whom I had never met before, attend my PhD defense simply because they found the topic relevant and interesting. To me, that demonstrated that the research had reached beyond academia and engaged the people who experience these challenges in their daily work. I truly value that connection between research and practice.

What do I hope my research can be used for in the future?

My research shows that organizational change is not only about new strategies, technologies, or business models. It is also about people trying to understand new expectations, adapt their roles, and find new ways of working together. I hope the findings help managers and sales practitioners better understand the challenges that accompany major changes in the business environment.

At the same time, I hope the research contributes to educating future sales professionals by providing a more realistic picture of modern B2B sales, where collaboration, adaptability, and coordination across functions are often just as important as selling itself. If the research helps bridge the gap between academia, education, and practice, then I believe it has made a meaningful contribution.

Advice for current and future PhD students

My advice would be to stay curious and trust the process. Research is rarely as linear as it may appear in the final thesis. When I started my PhD, I did not have a perfectly defined framework or a detailed roadmap. It took time, conversations, reading, writing, interviews, and many iterations before I fully understood the phenomenon I wanted to study. Looking back, I learned that periods of uncertainty and frustration are not signs that something is wrong. They are often part of developing new understanding. Some of my most valuable insights emerged after I had spent considerable time questioning assumptions, revisiting data, and exploring alternative explanations.

Finally, I would encourage PhD students to embrace dialogue. Throughout my journey, I learned from discussions with supervisors, fellow researchers, practitioners, students, and the academic literature itself. Research may seem like an individual endeavour, but knowledge is often developed through conversations with others.

A bit about the person behind the researcher

Outside academia, I enjoy spending time in my garden, riding my horse, hiking, swimming, and watching a good movie. These activities provide a welcome balance to research and teaching, giving me time to reflect, recharge, and appreciate the simple things in life. I am naturally curious, which is probably one of the reasons I embarked on a PhD journey later in life. I hop

Rikke Carlé PhD 

Rikke Carlé LinkedIn