Sustainability, TQM and Value Co-Creation Processes: The Role of Critical Success Factors

Barbara Aquilani,Cecilia Silvestri,Alessandro Ruggieri

doi:10.3390/su8100995

Barbara Aquilani, Cecilia Silvestri + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su8100995

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Oct 2, 2016
Citations: 61	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Tuscia University

Abstract

Sustainability views firm success and the welfare-wellbeing of societies in which they develop as closely inter-related. Value co-creation assumes that firms create value not only for themselves, but also for all actors willing to participate in co-creation processes, as well as for the whole ecosystem in which they operate. Thus, co-creation can sustain social development and sustainability. However, to ensure sustainability through value co-creation processes, TQM principles must be followed and Critical Success Factors (CSFs) reinterpreted following this perspective. In this important, but understudied context, the aim of the paper is to focus on value co-creation processes fostering sustainability, identifying which CSFs are most suitable to best support each phase of these processes. The paper is based on a review of the literature and bridges sustainability, value co-creation, TQM, EM and IMS literature for the first time, proposing a new model of value co-creation processes, which considers it a never ending cycle. The proposed model presents and discusses, for the first time, the most important CSFs to foster sustainability and opens the discussion on how to re-interpret quality principles, which must also be followed in value co-creation processes.

Highlights

“Sustainability may [...] be defined as maintaining well-being over a long, perhaps even an indefinite period” [1] (p. 3441) and is widely considered one of the most important factors in determining firm growth and development [2]
This paper aims at taking a first step towards the reinterpretation of traditional quality management principles, bridging the sustainability, value co-creation and Total Quality Management (TQM) literature, identifying which Critical Success Factors (CSFs) are more likely to ensure the quality of experiences made in each phase of the value co-creation process to foster sustainability
Having considered the role of the identified CSFs and considering the Environmental Management (EM) and Integrated Management Systems (IMS) literature in value co-creation processes represent a first attempt at including TQM principles in value co-creation processes towards sustainability

Summary

Introduction

“Sustainability may [...] be defined as maintaining well-being over a long, perhaps even an indefinite period” [1] (p. 3441) and is widely considered one of the most important factors in determining firm growth and development [2]. The most suited approach, in light of the present study, is the value co-creation approach [8] following a strategic perspective, in that it proposes as TQM and sustainability a full new philosophy of doing business and not just a different way of collaboratively creating new product offerings, as for example the service-dominant logic developed in the marketing domain (see, for example, [9,10,11]). Co-creation, following this approach, can be defined as the “joint creation and evolution of value with stakeholding individuals” and is the most wide-spread and recently discussed approach to firm value creation, assuming that value can no longer be created only within firms, but must be generated with partners and, especially in the long run, with customers [8] Value co-creation as intended above and sustainability share a new view of the key role of the firm in its operating context, towards a lasting expansion of wealth-welfare-wellbeing within the society in which it operates, which is really important when assuming that social and economic aspects cannot be separated because they “in reality are one and the same” [1] (p. 3436)

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