Theoretical Background

This chapter offers the key theoretical concepts that provide the basis of this book. I start by providing the conceptualization of legitimacy and organizational legitimacy and offering an excursus of the theoretical contributions of recent decades. I then link legitimacy with organizational sustainability and organizational change. Subsequently, I explain the concept of organizational learning and illustrate the transition from organizational learning to learning organizations. The chapter then focuses on value co-creation theory and its evolution in the academic debate, and introduces some models of value co-creation processes as well as the emerging “circular co-creation processes”. In each paragraph, I advance the main research gaps emerging from the extant literature, while in the last paragraph, I specifically highlight those gaps addressed in this book.