The complexity of major global challenges, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, requires the cooperation of multinational actors: NGOs, multinationals, States, the UN, the World Bank and other transnational institutions. These bring together relevant stakeholders, and more and more private actors with expertise on the subject in question, to then propose effective solutions, mainly in the form of standards and codes of conduct. Through a parental perspective, this research theorizes different strategies that companies use in the context of private governance to legitimize their power over their stakeholders.