Individual innovative behavior and IT professionals’ career satisfaction: Does leader-member exchange mediates the relationship?

Purpose Innovation is the key to competitive advantage that comes out of innovative behavior of employees in doing the tasks assigned to them thus aiding in strategic decisions. By concentrating on organizational (leader-member exchange) and individual (career satisfaction) parameters, the study aims to empirically investigate the mediating role of leader-member exchange in understanding the relationship between individual innovative behavior and career satisfaction of IT professionals. It also aims to understand the direct impact of individual innovative behavior on career satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach The study is conducted on a very powerful category of knowledge workers i.e. IT professionals in India. It is a cross-sectional study on 536 IT professionals to establish a model empirically by applying SEM through Smart PLS (version 4). Findings The findings reveal that individual innovative behavior and LMX both have direct positive impact on career satisfaction of IT professionals as well as LMX partially mediates for the relationship between individual innovative behavior and career satisfaction of IT professionals. Originality/value It examines LMX as mediator for the relationship between Individual innovative behavior and career satisfaction of IT Professionals. It also amalgamates three crucial theoretical frameworks to test the model created thus, showing their relevance in organizational context on knowledge workers such as IT professionals.