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This article suggests that by regarding the semantics of storytelling, we are able to explore how dominant stories influence and may contribute to organizational inertia. Using data from two change projects in large Scandinavian companies, it is shown that in the negotiation of meaning those stories that display semantic fit with the dominant story are perceived as more convincing, while those stories that lack this attribute appear oxymoronic and fail to have an impact. As a result, the organization is only able to change in a manner congruent with the dominant story and becomes inert in other respects. We suggest that a dominant story fixes not only the meaning of events, but also the meaning of the labels available for sensemaking. By this appropriation of language, the dominant story circumscribes sensemaking and storytelling possibilities, and thereby restricts organizational flux.

Digitalization has the potential to disrupt many service industries. This is already evident in industries offering standardized business-to-consumer services. Even knowledge-intensive business-to-business (B2B) services have increasingly blended digital technologies. Yet, little is known about how this type of service and its associated service work has changed, as tasks are being increasingly performed by robots or through artificial intelligence. This study fills this void by exploring how frontline workers in two highly knowledge-intensive B2B service industries—auditing and public relations/communication (PR/C) consulting—enact their service work in response to digitalization. Building on an interview study with 50 professionals and taking an interdisciplinary stance we find—contrary to the findings in previous research—that auditing firms embrace digitalization to a larger extent than PR/C firms. Further, we find that the frontline workers’ enactment of their service work is influenced by the fit between technological innovations and the type of intelligence their services are built on, as well as their occupational identities and the service climate within the firms. We conclude the article by developing propositions and a conceptual model, and outline how service firms can support their frontline workers’ infusion of digital technologies in their service work.

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