A semi-autonomous public organization’s legitimation work: the case of the survival of an actor in the disability field

This qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews and ethnography, starts from the observation that little research has been done on maintaining the legitimacy of semi-autonomous public organizations in a context constrained by certain principles of New Public Management. These principles question the legitimacy of public organizations as the most relevant actors for meeting user expectations. In this article, we study the case of GHP, a semi-autonomous public organization of the "agency" type based in France, which manages a public fund. Based on neo-institutional theory, the study seeks to understand the involvement of actors in the dynamics of maintaining the internal and external legitimacy that ensures the sustainability of an organization. We show that maintaining legitimacy and its alignment between internal and external sources is achieved in a process involving four stages: challenges, maintenance, diffusion, and consensus. Institutional entrepreneurs within the organization engage in legitimation work. Through this work, they respond to external regulatory challenges and internal destabilizing events that occur at various times and at different levels. We identify four key factors in the ability of institutional entrepreneurs to succeed in maintaining legitimacy: their resources, knowledge of structural gaps, conscious commitment, and the use of boundary organizations.