När legitimiteten hotas : En kvalitativ studie om hur en organisation kommunicerar vid ett legitimitetshot över tid

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ABSTRACT: Date: 2026-06-02 Level: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, 15 cr Institution: School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University Authors: Ida Aalto Josefine Holm Wilma Thyrén (03/09/11) (03/06/18) (03/08/19) Title: When legitimacy is threatened: A qualitative study of how an organization communicates during a legitimacy threat over time. Supervisor: Niklas Bomark Keywords: Legitimacy, crises, legitimacy repair, strategies Research question: How can organizational communication in annual reports be understood as a response to potential legitimacy threats, and how does the communication change depending on where in the crisis management process the organization is situated? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how organizational communication in annual reports can be understood in relation to potential legitimacy threats associated with crisis situations. Furthermore, the study aims to identify and analyze communication patterns by applying established legitimacy repair strategies to annual reports. The study also remains open to identifying and developing new strategies in cases where organizations' communication patterns cannot be explained by existing strategies. This is examined over time in order to develop a deeper understanding of how organizational communication changes depending on where organizations are situated within the crisis management process. Method: The thesis adopts a qualitative research design using a historical case study. The empirical material consists of secondary data in the form of publicly available annual reports. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis, through which key themes have been identified. An abductive approach has been applied during the analysis. Conclusion: The analysis shows that ten different legitimacy repair strategies could be applied to Swedbank’s communication in its annual reports, which were grouped into three metastrategies. The findings indicate that legitimacy repairing is a dynamic process that evolves over time, depending on the development of the crisis and the organization’s needs. Furthermore, two distinct phases of the crisis were identified: an initial phase characterized by efforts to influence stakeholders’ understanding of the crisis and communicate concrete actions, and a later phase characterized by long-term measures and organizational development.