This work aims to develop a conceptual model to support countries, institutions, and firms toward the accomplishment of present Agenda 2030 sustainability goals. The last two decades have seen a growing interest in sustainability. Climate change, resource scarcity, multipolarity of interests, mistrust and delegitimization of institutions are just some of the critical issues that need to be addressed. There is broad consensus on the urgency of generating further social, environmental, and economic innovation to address these challenges, reshaping global markets, and offering new spaces of action to firms and institutions. Accordingly, there also is a wide search for new models of organizing firms. Digital platforms are among those. Moreover, since digital platforms require coordination among multiple actors and interests in order to succeed, they may also be conceptualized as meta-organizations, less hierarchical than firms yet more tightly coupled than markets. However, despite the wide literature on platforms, this organizational lens seems not to have been taken into the right consideration. This conceptual work aims to fill this gap, providing a framework that clarifies why and how a digital platform ecosystem could configure a sustainable meta-organizational model, and also providing the main steps to build it.

To better implement sustainability initiatives in the Circular Economy (CE) age, benefiting of Total Quality Management (TQM) principles, the category of Social Enterprises (SE) manifests an enormous potential. Nonetheless, the above views have been lightly researched, providing research gaps in at least three areas: (1) TQM as an open model, expanded, and boundaryless that involves stakeholders in the value chain through value co-creation processes; (2) TQM and CE and (3) TQM and SE. Through this paper, we reconceptualize TQM with the lens of viable systems approach, CE and SE, while concluding with an illustrative case study and COVID-19 implications. Methodologically, we apply the inductive approach through the illustrative case of Patagonia by emphasizing also how COVID-19 influenced quality management and company-level circularity. This study revealed that the common denominator of TQM, CE and SE is the Triple Bottom Line (i.e. economic, social and environmental sustainability). Also, the concept of ‘value’ was another unifying notion, especially the value co-creation, social value and shared value. ESG implications showed that companies like Patagonia went through profit shrinking to safeguard societal and environmental welfare, with supply chain implications that involved factory workers and partners.

The aim of this paper is to propose an approach for representing the territory as a dynamic system of intersubjective relationships that is able to guarantee not only the efficiency of the processes within organizations, but also effective results in the general context and a sustainable impact on the broader environment. This contribution is developed on the basis of the viable systems approach (vSa), which is intended as a theoretical framework for the analysis of social phenomena as well as for orienting government processes. Using this theoretical framework, the proposed approach leads to the representation of the territory as a viable system that is capable of surviving in its own context by creating value for the other entities of the context (public groups of governments, communities, investors, natural environment, future generations, non-human species), thus defining the essential conditions for a sustainable equilibrium. The consideration that social phenomena have to be analyzed by taking into account the different relations and interactions that orient the behavior of individuals and, as a consequence, their main collective manifestations, i.e., organizations, underlines the importance of shifting from a traditional reductionist approach to a systemic approach. In what follows, taking a cue from the definition of sustainability that implies a wider sharing, we provide some initial critical positions, and finally shape the useful elements that can be preparatory to the introduction of a working hypothesis that is capable of delineating a possible itinerary for the development of the territory.