Career Satisfaction in Maximising Professionals of Indian IT Industry: Mediating Roles of Contrasting Responses Based on Counterfactual Reasoning

This study conceptualises career maximisation and its consequences in the Indian Information Technology (IT) workforce, a globally significant non-Western talent pool. It examined how maximising tendency in career decision-making (MT-CD) mediated career satisfaction through two contrasting responses based on counterfactual reasoning―career regret (dysfunctional) and career adaptability (functional). The study comprised of two parts. In Study 1, scales for MT-CD and career regret were developed and initially validated using a 172 respondents’ dataset. In Study 2, data from 434 respondents were analysed for psychometric evaluation and further validation of scales along with determining hypothesised relationships. Two dimensions of MT-CD were identified―‘state of internal career ambiguity’ and ‘striving for career excellence’. Both attributes produced career regret (an aggregated measure of ‘corporate regrets’, ‘career choice regrets’ and ‘developmental regrets’ dimensions), decreasing career satisfaction. Only ‘striving for career excellence’ led to career adaptability, which subsequently increased career satisfaction. Altogether, career regret competed with career adaptability, supressing its positive indirect effect on maximising ITPs’ career satisfaction. This study expands the current empirical research on career maximisation into non-Western contexts, adding unique knowledge to the Indian IT workforce’s vocational literature.