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.

中文翻译：

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高层谈话：国际组织中的领导力和自我合法化

领导者如何在国际组织 (IO) 中建立合法性？人们普遍承认，合法性对 IO 很重要，但很少有研究考察内部自我合法化——为员工而非外部受众创造合法性——以及谁在 IO 中专门从事这些自我合法化活动。本文通过研究领导者在自我合法化中的特殊作用来填补这些空白，我开发了一个理论框架，表明 (1) 由于领导者在 IO 中的高社会地位和他们获得合法性的话语资源，（2）领导者如何通过引入或重新引入叙述以及创建自我指涉语言来创造内部合法性，以及（3）领导者主导的自我合法性如何带来三个潜在风险。我用三个案例研究来说明这些观点，一个来自世界银行，两个来自联合国。最后，我为这个尚未充分探索的 IO 和学术合法性领域提出了一个新的研究议程。