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

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.