Governing the Issue: Strategic Delayed Moralization of AI in Law Enforcement
研究组织如何通过策略性延迟道德化过程，主动塑造人工智能从技术工具到道德对象的转变时机，以ShotSpotter枪击检测系统为例分析十年组织沟通与公共话语。
Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are typically first adopted as embodiments of rationality and neutrality, and only later do their moral implications receive public scrutiny. This temporal gap between adoption and moral recognition has been widely observed, yet how organizations actively sustain it remains undertheorized. This study theorizes strategic delayed moralization as the process through which organizations actively shape the timing and trajectory of AI transition from technical artifacts to morally recognized objects. We focus on ShotSpotter, an AI-powered gunshot detection system used in law enforcement, analyzing a decade of organizational communications and public discourse. Combining issue management and strategic ambiguity theory, we develop a process model showing how organizations deploy evolving forms of strategic ambiguity to delay moral recognition, and how this process is ultimately constrained by societal moralization that progressively narrows the space for ambiguity. This research contributes to research on AI in society by showing how business and society interact in shaping the moral trajectory of AI.