STAKEHOLDER COLLABORATION, ORGANISATIONAL TRUST, DIGITAL-GREEN CAPABILITY AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIAL IMPACT: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR RESPONSIBLE COLLABORATION

Abstract

Responsible sustainability programmes in India increasingly depend on collaboration among firms, public agencies, civil-society organisations, technology providers and communities, yet collaboration alone may not ensure sustainable outcomes. This conceptual paper develops a framework integrating stakeholder collaboration, organisational trust, digital-green capability and sustainable social impact to explain how collaborative efforts are converted into meaningful and lasting outcomes. Drawing on stakeholder, organisational trust, digital transformation and sustainability literature, the paper develops six propositions and advances a dual-conversion explanation in which stakeholder collaboration influences sustainable social impact directly and indirectly through two complementary parallel pathways. Organisational trust represents the relational conversion pathway by supporting credibility, acceptance and continued cooperation, while digital-green capability represents the operational conversion pathway by enabling collaborative intentions to be translated into responsible digital and environmentally sustainable action. The framework is critically compared with alternative explanations, and relevant contextual boundary conditions are identified. A future empirical design is proposed using validated measurement bases, power-oriented sampling, PLS-SEM, construct reliability and validity assessment, common-method safeguards and endogeneity checks. The framework provides a theoretically grounded and empirically testable explanation of how responsible collaboration can contribute to sustainable social impact in the Indian context.