Strategic AI disclosures and legitimacy: Impression management in UK FTSE100 annual reports

By incorporating impression management strategies with legitimacy theory, this study investigates how UK FTSE100 corporations strategically communicate their AI disclosures to achieve, sustain, and/or restore legitimacy. It employs a mixed-methods content analysis to analyse textual AI data from the annual reports of 80 UK non-financial corporations listed in the FTSE100 index (2020 to 2023). Results reveal an increasing trend among UK corporations to disclose AI narratives. This study finds that FTSE100 corporations employ a blend of ‘assertive’ and ‘defensive’ impression management tactics in AI disclosures to influence stakeholder perceptions and maintain their legitimacy. Findings also indicate a significant post-crisis shift from defensive to assertive AI disclosures, underscoring how FTSE100 corporations strategically adapted their impression management tactics to reinforce pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating how impression‑management tactics shape AI legitimacy, offering practitioners strategies for transparent communication, informing legislators on ethical AI regulation, and enabling stakeholders to interpret AI disclosures as indicators of corporate conduct. <h2>Other Information</h2> Published in: International Journal of Accounting Information Systems<br> License: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</a><br>See article on publisher's website: <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2025.100757" target="_blank">https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2025.100757</a>