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A growing literature has examined how international organizations (IOs) use narratives for self-legitimation—legitimation aimed not at external audiences but at IO staff themselves. However, little work examines why some self-legitimation narratives 'stick' and others fade away or are challenged by counter-narratives. I address this question by focusing on the content of self-legitimation narratives. First, I describe the lifecycle of self-legitimation narratives in IOs, showing how they can be endorsed, rejected or challenged by legitimacy audiences. Next, I posit a three-part typology of narrative content: purpose, performance and politics. Drawing on 87 interviews with IO staff, I argue that narratives of purpose, which focus on organizational values and norms, are more likely to be endorsed and become dominant, while those that focus on performance or politics are more likely to be rejected or challenged. Where this happens, legitimacy agents must adjust narrative content in line with audience demands. I illustrate this with two case-studies from the United Nations. I conclude with the policy implications of these findings, in particular the importance for IO leaders to align internal messaging with the values and normative expectations of staff or risk staff demotivation and cynicism, ultimately imperiling organizational effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do leaders create legitimacy in international organizations (IOs)? It is widely acknowledged that legitimacy matters to IOs, but little research examines internal self-legitimation—the creation of legitimacy for staff, rather than for external audiences—and who specifically undertakes these self-legitimation activities in IOs. This paper fills these gaps by examining the particular role of leaders in self-legitimation and I develop a theoretical framework that shows (1) how leaders have a unique role to play as legitimators due to their high social status within the IO and their access to discursive resources for legitimation, (2) how leaders create internal legitimacy through the introduction or reintroduction of narratives and the creation of self-referential language, and (3) how leader-led self-legitimation entails three potential risks. I illustrate these points with three case studies, one from the World Bank and two from the United Nations. I conclude by proposing a new research agenda for this underexplored area of IO and legitimacy scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most analyses of legitimacy and legitimation in international organizations (IOs) focus on the perceptions of external audiences. In so doing, they fail to consider self-legitimation, where an IO undertakes legitimation internally, as a way of developing and reinforcing its identity. Moreover, most studies of IO legitimacy neglect the fact that IO identities are rarely uniform and instead are multiple and conflicting. I address these omissions by examining self-legitimation in three IOs—the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the World Bank. These organizations are both operational and normative actors, and both institutions dependent on member states and autonomous bodies with independent expertise and capacities. These identities sometimes dictate contradictory goals and practices, forcing the organizations to violate the principles and activities considered appropriate to one of their identities, thus complicating legitimation. Based on extensive fieldwork and drawing on a range of disciplines, this article proposes a novel theory of IO self-legitimation: I argue that the need for self-legitimation depends on the degree of identity cohesion and identity hierarchy of the organization. I identify two temporal dimensions of self-legitimation, three categories of self-legitimation practices, and three broader repercussions of self-legitimation, ultimately showing that self-legitimation is a necessary and constitutive activity for IOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]