Triadic Capability: Sales-Service-Digital Capabilities

According to the PLOS ONE study (published August 10, 2026), frontline power-generation workers who moved into sales roles develop a three-part capability: sales, service, and digital, and digital capability emerges as an independent core dimension rather than just a support tool. PLOS ONE

• The PLOS ONE study conducted 28 semi-structured interviews (16 in Guangxi, 12 in Shenzhen) and a questionnaire with 146 valid responses in 2025, with a reported response rate of 90.1%.
• The PLOS ONE article reports that 87.5% (24/28) of interviewees explicitly mentioned digital capability as conceptually independent in interviews conducted for the study.
• By the end of 2020, China had about 350, 000 professionals in electricity trading and 808, 000 when consumer-side energy managers were included, a contextual fact the PLOS ONE authors cite to explain workforce scale.

According to the PLOS ONE article published August 10, 2026, the authors used a qualitatively-driven mixed method combining grounded theory and a validation survey to study sales personnel in two CGN New Energy subsidiaries.

According to the PLOS ONE study, the focal case was CGN New Energy Guangxi and the comparative case was CGN New Energy Shenzhen, selected for variation in market digitalization and transformation stage.

According to the PLOS ONE article, the qualitative corpus included 28 interviews that were transcribed into roughly 270, 000 words and archival materials of about 280 pages, and the study imported these sources into NVivo 14 for coding.

According to the PLOS ONE study, coding proceeded with open, axial, and selective stages following the Gioia methodology, yielding 127 first-order concepts, 24 second-order themes, and an aggregated triadic capability framework.

Qualitative researchers should treat the sales-service-digital capabilities as three analytically separable but interacting constructs, according to the PLOS ONE study.

• When coding interviews, label "digital capability" codes separately from sales and service codes, because the PLOS ONE authors found digital themes were conceptually independent in 87.5% of interviews.
• When designing mixed-methods validation, mirror the PLOS ONE approach: use grounded theory for construct emergence, then a focused questionnaire for triangulation, as the authors did with 146 responses.
• When reporting timelines, document foundation-layer versus innovation-layer evidence, because the PLOS ONE study shows each capability has a prerequisite foundation layer before innovation-layer practices are observed.

According to the PLOS ONE study published August 10, 2026, sales personnel in China’s power sector develop a triadic capability of sales, service, and digital, with foundation and innovation layers and three contextual development pathways.

Practically, qualitative researchers should code digital-capability evidence separately, validate themes with targeted surveys, and document foundation-to-innovation transitions as the PLOS ONE authors did.

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