Enhancing IT Project Sustainability: The Role of Collaborative Resources, Stakeholder Engagement, and Project Governance

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of collaborative social resources on project sustainability in Pakistan's IT Projects, with particular emphasis on the mediating effect of stakeholder engagement and the moderating role of project governance. A quantitative research strategy applied using a standardized questionnaire administered via Google Forms. The questionnaire, developed after reviewing relevant literature, and shared with IT professionals across Pakistan, yielding 342 valid responses out of approximately 600 distributed forms. Data analyzed with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for preliminary analysis and AMOS (Analysis of Moment Structures) Structural Equation Modeling used for measurement and structural model analysis. Results indicate that collaborative social resources have a positive and significant effect on project sustainability. However, stakeholder engagement partially mediates this relationship, evidencing the crucial role it plays in converting social collaboration into sustainable results. Furthermore, the moderating role of project governance influenced the strength of this relationship, highlighting the importance of governance mechanisms in enhancing or constraining the impact of social collaboration. Practical and theoretical implications: research found that cross-collaborative practices like participative decision-making, regular feedback loops, and open lines of communication are crucial to bridge various stakeholder interests and maintain momentum over the project life cycle in IT projects. Additionally, social conceptions are added to performance and strategy discussions in project-centric settings, transcending triple-bottom-line frameworks to relational and network-centric resources. Further, it has been demonstrated that the sustainability of IT projects transitions from technical project management to a socially grounded, people-focused approach.