Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2010

Developing human capital by linking emotional intelligence

with personal competencies in Indian business organizations

Kavita Singh

Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi

Delhi–110007, India

Tel: ++91-11-9810784874

Email: kavita@fms.edu

Abstract

The concept of emotional intelligence has become so popular in the management literature that it has

become imperative to understand and leverage it for the sake of enhancing the capacity of human

capital in organizations. As the pace of change is increasing and world of work is making ever greater

demands on a person‟s cognitive, emotional and physical resources, this particular set of abilities are

becoming increasingly important. Since majority of the concerns in organization involve people in

different roles, emotional intelligence must become a determining factor for their effective

management. It has also been found that ultimately it is the emotional and personal competencies that

we need to identify and measure if we want to be able to predict performance at workplace resulting in

its effectiveness, thereby enhancing the worth of the human capital. In this scenario the competencies

possessed by the people will have a bearing on the extent to which they can actualize their emotional

intelligence. The current paper sets out to examine the relationship between the emotional intelligence

of executives in Indian business organizations with their personal competencies. The result suggests

that emotional intelligence is significantly related with the personal competencies of employees and the

variables of personal competency namely, people success, system success and self success have a

predictive relationship with emotional intelligence.

Keywords: emotional intelligence, personal competencies, self success, people success, task success,

system success

Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org

1 INTRODUCTION

James Dozier discovered the power of emotional intelligence in 1981, which resulted in saving his

life. Dozier was a U.S. Army Brigadier General who was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, an Italian

terrorist group. During the initial days his captives were euphoric with excitement and were agitated

and irrational at times and he felt that his life was in danger. To save himself, he remembered

something he had learned about emotion in an Executive Development Program at the Center for

Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Emotions are contagious, and a single person can influence the emotional tone of a group by

modeling. He first thought of getting his own emotions under control, quite a difficult task to achieve!

He tried to calm himself and conveyed his calmness to his captives through his actions. He then

realized that his captors also caught his calmness and became more rational. In retrospect when Dozier

looked back on this episode, he was convinced that his ability to manage his own emotional reactions

and those of his captors literally saved his life (Campbell, 1990).

The term emotional intelligence (EI) had not been coined in 1981, but James Dozier actually

experienced it live and gave us an initial framework to identify what it is: “The ability to perceive and

express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate

emotion in the self and others” (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso 2000). Dozier could perceive accurately the

emotional reactions of his captors, and he also diagnosed the danger that those reactions posed for him.

By regulating his emotions and then expressing them effectively, he was able to manage the emotions

of his captors. This incident illustrates emotional intelligence in action.

Since then the concept of emotional intelligence has become so popular in the management

literature that it has become imperative to understand and be aware of the research and theory on which

it is based. It is also useful to consider how emotional intelligence is important for effective

performance at work place. As the pace of change is increasing and world of work is making ever

greater demands on a person‟s cognitive, emotional and physical resources, this particular set of

abilities are becoming increasingly important.

Traditional measures of intelligence, although providing some degree of predictive validity, have

not been able to account for a large portion of the variance in work performance and career success. As

Goleman (1998) states, "When IQ test scores are correlated with how well people perform in their

careers the highest estimate of how much difference IQ accounts for is about 25 percent (Hunter &

Hunter, 1984; Schmidt & Hunter, 1981). A careful analysis, though, suggests that a more accurate

figure may be no higher than 10 percent and perhaps as low as 4 percent" (Sternberg, 1997).

The Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Workplace Effectiveness

Look deeply at almost any factor that influences work place effectiveness, and you will find that

emotional intelligence plays a role. Any growing and prosperous organization needs to retain good

employees, particularly those with the competencies that are important in the high-tech economy. What

is it that can make an employee stay with an organization for a longer duration? A Gallup Organization

study of two million employees at seven hundred companies found that duration of stay of an employee

in a company and his productivity would be determined by his relationship with his immediate

supervisor (Zipkin, 2000). In another study by Spherion, a staffing and consulting firm in Fort

Lauderdale, Florida, and Lou Harris Associates, it was found that only 11 percent of the employees

who ranked their bosses as excellent were likely to look for another job, however, 40 percent of those

who ranked their bosses as poor wanted to leave. In other words, people who have good relation with

boss are four times less likely to leave than are those who have poor relationship (Zipkin, 2000).

The greatest challenges that the organizations face today include (Cherniss, 2001):

 Coping with massive, rapid change.

 Employees need to be more creative in order to drive innovation.

 Managing huge amounts of information.

 Enhancing customer loyalty.

 Employees need to be more motivated and committed.

 Need for collaborative effort.

 The organization needs to make better use of the special talents available in a diverse

workforce.

 The organization needs to identify potential leaders in its ranks and prepare them to move

up.

 The organization needs to identify and recruit top talent.

Kavita Singh

 The organization needs to make good decisions about new markets, products, and

strategic alliances.

 The organization needs to prepare employees for overseas assignments.

These and many more concerns today confront work organizations, both public and private. Since

majority of these concerns involve people in different roles, emotional intelligence must become a

determining factor for their effective management. And in virtually every case, emotional intelligence

must play an important role in handling the concern. For instance, while dealing with the process of

change in an organization a lot of emotions get generated which may range from very positive to very

negative (Singh, 2005). This requires ability on the part of both the employer and the employees to

perceive and understand the emotional impact of change on self and others. To be effective in helping

their organizations manage change, leaders should be aware of and manage feelings of anxiety and

uncertainty of their employees (Bunker, 1997). They also should be able to appreciate the emotional

reactions of other employees and help them to cope up with change. Besides the leader, the other

members of the organization should be also able to monitor and manage their own emotional reaction

as well as of their colleagues. Ultimately it is these social and emotional competencies that we need to

identify and measure if we want to be able to predict performance at workplace resulting in its

effectiveness.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Emotional Intelligence

Salovey and Mayer (1990) coined the term emotional intelligence in 1990, while being aware of

the previous work on non-cognitive aspects of intelligence. They described emotional intelligence as "a

form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one‟s own and others‟ feelings and

emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one‟s thinking and action”.

In the early 1990‟s Daniel Goleman became aware of Salovey and Mayer‟s work, and this eventually

led to his book on Emotional Intelligence.

Goleman proposes that cognitive skill 'can help you get a job' in a company, but emotional skill

helps you „grow in the job‟ once you‟re hired. To illustrate Goleman‟s point, psychologist Stein and

Book (2006), marketers of tests that assess employees‟ emotional intelligence quotient (EQ), cite the

example of a Harvard business graduate who received numerous job offers from companies clamoring

to hire her. However, due to a lack of emotional intelligence, the woman continually sparred with her

employers and couldn‟t keep any of the jobs. Goleman (1998) concludes by stating that 'Emotional

intelligence matters twice as much as technical and analytic skill combined for star performances. And

the higher people move up in the company, the more crucial emotional intelligence becomes.'

To rise higher in one‟s professional competence at the workplace, it is not just essential that

individuals are good in their jobs. They are required to be more positive, approachable, warm,

empathetic and optimistic. A number of studies in the area suggest that it takes more than traditional

cognitive intelligence to be successful at work. The emotional intelligence of the person which include

his ability to restrain the negative feelings and focus on positive feelings plays an important role in

determining his success The idea got further boost with the release of a book by Daniel Goleman,

'Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ,' (1995).

In another book, 'Working With Emotional Intelligence', Goleman (1998) focused on the need for

emotional intelligence at work, an area often considered more head than heart. The notion does not

remain limited to the managers and leaders of the organization but any job that requires dealing with

people would require the input of emotional intelligence. Also, whereas IQ is relatively fixed,

emotional intelligence can be built and learned. Companies can test and teach emotional intelligence,

and many employers are already beginning to do so.

For the purpose of the present study, emotional intelligence has been discussed with the help of

following dimensions:

Self Awareness: Self-awareness is being conscious of and being able to connect with our personal

feelings, thoughts and actions. This helps a person get a clearer perception of what he wants to achieve

in life and therefore be able to work on his level of competencies. Self-awareness may also include

some degree of self-disclosure so that we can develop effective relationship with other people around

us and lead a more fulfilling life by sharing and receiving information.

Commitment: True commitment is a virtue and a personal trait that is learned very early in life.

Being committed is a state of mind and is determined by number of factors. It is based on one‟s own

personal choices as well as the expectations from other people around us. It is also determined by the

Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org

quality of relationship we share with people, groups, organizations or tasks that we are supposed to be

committed to be.

Resilience: Resilience refers to one‟s ability to adjust well in adverse stressful and crises

situations. It is the ability to perform well and consistently in a range of situations and when under

pressure. The degree of resilience can vary amongst individuals from being high to low on resilience. A

number of factors determine a person‟s ability to be resilient even in adversities. These include age,

gender, and frequent exposure to stressful situations.

Optimism: Optimism is defined as an approach in life where a person has a positive belief that

good things will happen independent of one's ability. It could be the result of both the inherited

characteristics as well as experience. Some of us are naturally inclined to be positive thinkers and

therefore optimistic while few of us also acquire it through social interaction. Companies, as well as

individuals, create their own internal expectations of optimism or pessimism. The attitude starts with

the basic belief in things around us - good or bad.

Compassion: Compassion has been defined as awareness about the suffering of others and a

desire to relieve that suffering. It is a kind of emotion: a feeling in motion. In addition to the wish to

help the other person in distress it may also involve taking actions and making efforts to help them

overcome it. It is an active feeling. When a feeling is active, it can be used as a tool. As a tool, it can

be used in a positive or negative manner.

Interpersonal Connectivity: Interpersonal connectivity can be described as an ability to develop

effective relationship with other people around you and get along with them both in personal and

professional lives. The success of this connectivity would be determined by the response from the other

party.

Personal Integrity: Personal integrity refers to a quality of a person's character. This includes

being honest with oneself as well as with others around you. It also involves being responsible for what

you seek and undertake in life and being able to own up one‟s own faults in cases of failure. It

encompasses the concept of wholeness, intactness and purity about one‟s thoughts, feelings and

actions.

Emotional Regulation: Emotional regulation is the ability to regulate one‟s emotions whenever

required. It may be required to either enhance or reduce one‟s emotion according to the demands of the

situation. Emotional regulation can also be described as a range of skills that are instrumental in

keeping the emotional system healthy and functioning. It includes being able to recognize the

emotional response and understand it; accept the response as being your own; identify strategies to

reduce or enhance the intensity of the emotions; and engage in the goal directed behaviour.

3 PERSONAL COMPETENCIES

According to Boyatzis (1982), competence means different things to different people. However, it

is generally accepted as encompassing knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours that are causally

related to superior job performance. This understanding of competence can be either described on the

basis of attribute-based inference (Gonczi & Hager, 1992) or on the basis of performance-based

approach which demonstrates performance at pre-defined acceptable standards in the workplace

(Gonczi et al., 1990).

The definition of "competency" adopted from Parry's (1998) work includes a multi-dimensional

approach to understand competency. According to this definition competency:

 is "a cluster of related knowledge, attitudes, skills, and other personal characteristics that

affects a major part of one's job,

 correlates with performance on the job,

 can be measured against well-accepted standards,

 can be improved via training and development and

 can be broken down into different components".

The major components of competencies include: abilities, attitudes, behaviour, knowledge,

personality and skills. Another definition of "personal competency" which has been adopted from Finn

(1993) and Crawford (1997) states that personal competency is "the core personality characteristics

underlying a person's capability to do a project. These are behaviour, motives, traits, attitudes, and self

concepts that enable a person to successfully manage a project".

According to Spencer and Spencer (1993) the six components of competency are:

 Achievement and action: This competency consists of achievement orientation; concern

for order in quality and accuracy; initiative and information seeking.

Kavita Singh

 Helping and human service: This competency implies that the manager has customer

service orientation and interpersonal understanding.

 Impact and influence: This competency comprises impact and influence capability;

organisation awareness and relationship building.

 Managerial competency: This competency includes teamwork and cooperation;

capability in developing others; team leadership and directiveness, assertiveness and

positional power using.

 Cognitive: This competency implies that the manager has both analytical thinking

capability and conceptual thinking ability.

 Personal effectiveness: This competency covers self-control; self-confidence; flexibility

and organizational commitment.

Considering the understanding of a number of corporate giants, such as, AT & T, Chevron, Citicorp,

General Electric, Honeywell and Pepsi-co, Ryback (1998) has proposed seven core competencies of

today‟s successful managers:

 Strategic planning

 Communication and alignment

 Team building

 Continuous learning

 Dynamic accountability

 Systematic results

 Actualized integrity

4 LINK BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND PERSONAL

COMPETENCIES

As a person makes a transition from the transactional to transformational approach to create a

necessary socio-emotional nearness with people around him, the trait of emotional intelligence

becomes a reality. The resultant strengthening of bonds between the individuals help both parties to

establish trust and mutuality based on common interests, goals, and a sense of mission, creating the

necessary conditions for achievement of personal and organizational goals. Essentially, in order to

connect the individual has to bring into play certain personal, social and organizational competencies in

mutually acceptable combinations for achieving organizational excellence. Thus, emotionally

intelligent behaviour addresses the basic issues for bringing workplace effectiveness and helps to attain

higher levels of organizational growth and excellence. This essentially aids in the process of

developing congenial work environment in the organization leading to efficiency at the workplace and

development and enhancement of human capital.

Recently, some of the American companies have started concentrating on this dimension of the

human being. It deals with those ultimate human capacities and potentialities, which have a significant

impact on the various aspects of organizational climate. Enrichment of the emotional dimension would

help to solve behavioural problems arising from material and social dimensions and contribute to the

true effectiveness of an organization (Elankumaran et.al, 2005).

With the opening up of the Indian economy through liberalization, privatization, globalization and

natural thrust towards information technology the tasks of Indian business executives has become more

demanding. The challenges get multiplied when the Indian executives have to work in diversified work

cultures. The workforce diversity has not only offered the emotional stability to the executives but has

also come on the way of leadership behaviour and effectiveness (Punia, 2004). Technology represents

only 5% of the transformation process; the other 95% of a company‟s metamorphosis is represented by

the changes in organizational behaviour and culture that are the heart of leadership.

The emotional intelligence intervention is partly a response to the problems that businesses face

today. There is a need to develop the highest standard of leadership skills, the challenges of high team

turnover, ever increasing demands of customers for high quality goods and services, rapidly changing

business environment, economic demands or escalating costs. What companies need is people who

have both technical knowledge and social and emotional abilities which will enable them to delight the

customers. Emotional intelligence can contribute to developing those skills and abilities that are linked

with this aspiration (Orme & Langhorn, 2003). Personal competencies play a very vital role in

influencing the emotional intelligence of employees in organizations.

Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org

For the purpose of present study following four dimensions of personal competencies have been

identified:

 People success

 Task success

 System success

 Self success

People Success: This competency involves understanding behaviour in interpersonal context,

where people refer to connectivity and building bridges with others for attaining and maximizing

common goals. Interactivity denotes interrelationship among people and refers to how they relate to

one another. Empathy, service and organizational awareness are corner stones of social connectivity.

Emotional intelligence is becoming crucial in the context of individual‟s behaviour within the

organizational context. With the flattening of the organization structure, the span of control is now

larger for the leader who has to adapt emotionally intelligent behaviour to generate people success. In a

study by Singh (2007), it was found that the relationship dimension of individual behaviour is

important to be effective leader and adds to his success. Jordan and Troth (2004) also found that

emotional intelligence was directly related to performance at group level and emotions are important

contributing directly to team performance. Thus the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 1 (H1): Emotional intelligence is significantly related to people success.

Task Success: This competency refers to the ability of the individual to focus on the current task

in hand and try to do it with utmost efficiency and accuracy. This will also involve the use of creative

thoughts and innovative principles in handling the tasks more effectively. In a study by Lyons and

Schneider (2005), it was found that certain dimensions of emotional intelligence were related to more

challenge and enhanced performance, thereby increasing task success. Lopes et. al. (2006) found that

employees high on emotional intelligence received greater merit increases and held higher company

rank than their counterparts. These employees also received better peer and/or supervisor ratings of

interpersonal facilitation and stress tolerance. A study by Jaeger (2003) revealed a strong relationship

between emotional intelligence and performance of employees leading to task success. On the basis of

these findings the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 2 (H2): There is a significant positive relationship between Emotional intelligence and

task success

System Success: With this competency, individuals are focused on the organizational issues and

the act of doing things together in the organizational context becomes a reality. The following

processes occur with this competency in the organizations:

 The person identifies the organizational and environmental variables that control his or

her behavior.

 The person works with others to discover the personalized set of environmental or

organizational contingencies that regulate their behavior.

 The individuals jointly attempt to build bonds to cultivate and maintain a web of

relationships to produce more mutually reinforcing and organizationally productive

outcomes.

Sy, Tram and O'Hara (2006) reported managers' emotional intelligence had a stronger positive

correlation with job satisfaction and job performance. Lyons and Schneider (2005) found that high

emotional intelligence levels promote challenge appraisal and lead to better performance. It has been

suggested in one of the studies that a link between the emotional intelligence and work place measure

of effectiveness would lead to enhanced system success (Rosete & Ciarrochi, 2005). Thus the

following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 3 (H3): Emotional intelligence has a significant positive relationship with system

success

Self Success: This competency consists of self-awareness, which is the basic foundation on which

emotionally intelligent behaviour germinates and refers to the ability to read one‟s own emotions and

recognizing their impact to guide decisions. It is necessary for the individuals to have an accurate self

assessment by knowing his/her own strengths and limitations (Self directed learning). A self directed

Kavita Singh

learning leads to a positive evaluation of one‟s self worth and capabilities which are vital for one‟s

success.

Since emotional intelligence comprises both intra-personal and interpersonal abilities, the success

of self is the key component of emotional intelligence. Stein and Book (2006) elaborated the concept of

self as the ability to recognize one‟s feelings and to be able to differentiate between them, to know

what you are feeling and also to know what caused that feeling. An emotionally intelligent person is

able to do thereby leading to self success. Thus the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 4 (H4): Emotional intelligence is significantly related to self success.

For the competencies to be effectively converted into developing an empowered workforce, the

following steps are necessary to create an environment in which people can grow:

 Focus on development should be well-communicated.

 Individual should own up the responsibility for their own development and leaders

should help them in providing with resources and support.

 After an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses and therefore on the basis of

competency gaps, individuals should be able to develop their development plans.

 A deadline should be formulated to achieve the targets with proper feedback system in

place.

 A proper reward system needs to be developed to keep the employees of the organization

motivated.

5 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The present study intends to determine the relevance of the concept of emotional intelligence to

the business organizations and to explore the extent to which it may be possible to utilize this concept

as a means of creating a sustainable competitive advantage by attracting, motivating, training and

retaining customer conscious employees at all levels of the organization.

The objective of the study is to develop a framework to identify the relationship between

emotional intelligence and personal competencies of executives in Indian business organizations. The

expected linkage between the dimensions of personal competencies and emotional intelligence are

presented in Figure 1. The model (Figure1) below depicts the influence of personal competencies on

emotional intelligent behaviour which is instrumental in enhancing the human capital in this emerging

paradigm. In this theoretical construct the dimensions of personal competencies are the independent

variables and emotional intelligence is the dependent variable. The model proposes to suggest that to

develop an emotionally intelligent work force; personal competencies need to be promoted in business

organizations.

Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org

Figure1: Relationship between Personal Competencies and Emotionally Intelligent Behaviour

6 METHOD

This section discusses sample size, data collection along with suitable statistical tests used for

evaluating research hypotheses.

Sample and Data Collection

A total of 500 self-administered questionnaires were distributed at managerial level. Against the

targeted sample of 500 questionnaires, 378 questionnaires have been collected and analyzed. Stratified

random sampling was used to collect the data. The distribution of the questionnaire was done on the

basis of suitability mostly by personal contact, e-mail and use of postal services. The concerned person

was contacted through phone or email before sending the questionnaire. As the questionnaire was self

explanatory, the respondents were asked to respond as per the instructions given in the questionnaire

and were assured of confidentiality. A total of 378 correctly completed questionnaire were returned by

the respondents.

There were three sections of the questionnaire used to collect the necessary data. The first portion

of the questionnaire inquired about the personal information of the respondents. The second portion

focused on emotional intelligence (dependent variable) and consisted of 8 dimensions measured with

the help of 40 items with the highest score being 200. The eight dimensions were:

1. Self awareness

2. Commitment

3. Resilience

4. Optimism

5. Compassion

6. Interpersonal Connectivity

7. Personal Integrity

8. Emotional Regulation

The scales used in the questionnaire included the Likert Scale. The Likert scale uses a rating of 1

to 5, where 1 indicates „Strongly Disagree‟ and 5 indicates „Strongly Agree‟. The reliability statistics

Cronbach Alpha was calculated to be 0.81 for the items.

People

success

Task success

System success

Enhancement of Human Capital

Emotionally intelligent

behaviour

Self Success

Dimensions of Personal Competencies

Kavita Singh

The third section of the questionnaire focused on personal competencies consisting of four

dimensions spread over 20 items (measured on a five point scale). This has been developed on the basis

of the personal competencies assessment developed by Axiometrics International, Inc. and Workforce

Solutions, Inc. It measures four different competencies of the employees namely:

1. People Success

2. Task Success

3. System Success

4. Self Success

The scales used in the questionnaire included the Likert Scale. The Likert scale uses a rating of 1

to 5, where 1 indicates „Strongly Disagree‟ and 5 indicates „Strongly Agree‟, with the highest score in

each of the competencies being 25. The reliability statistics Cronbach Alpha was calculated to be 0.79

for the items.

Analyses of the Data

The data was subjected to statistical analysis for the purpose of interpretation. Descriptive

statistics such as mean, standard deviation and intercorrelations were computed to understand the

interdependence between the variables. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

While collecting the data it was observed that there was non-willingness on the part of the

executives to participate in the study for the fear of being quoted and identified. Since the study was

based on self reported data, so the findings may be biased by common method variance and spurious

cause/effect inferences. The generalizations occurring from the study are more conducive and limited

to a particular group of employees who participated in the study. It other words, the limitations come

from the sampling techniques used, which is non-probability based convenience sampling.

7 RESULTS

Profile of the Respondents

The total sample size was 378. The group comprised of 102 (27%) females and 276 (73%) males.

In the group 26% respondents were in the age group of 21-25 years. 32% of the respondents were in the

26-30 years age category and 22% were in 31-35 years of age. Rest of the respondents were more than

35 years of age. 53% of the respondents were married. While drawing the experience profile of the

respondents it was seen that 70% of them had an experience of 5-15 years, followed by 25% with an

experience of less than 5 years. 5% were found to be having an experience of 15.25 years. The data was

collected from Indian organizations which were situated in and around Delhi, the National Capital of

India.

Relationship between the variables

The following table (Table 1) depicts the mean scores and the standard deviations of the variables

under study.

Table 1: Mean and Standard deviation of the variables under study

S. No.

Variables

Mean score

Standard

deviation

Total number of

respondents

Emotional Intelligence

152.21 (200)

11.32

378

People Success

20.63 (25)

2.04

378

Task Success

20.35 (25)

2.38

378

System Success

20.48 (25)

2.17

378

Self Success

20.17 (25)

2.08

378

From the above Table 1 it can be observed that the emotional intelligence and the competency

level of the employees‟ shows a higher score on the mean indicating that executives in business

organization generally possess a high level of personal competency and emotional intelligence. The

next step in the study is to find out the relationship between the emotional intelligence and the

dimensions of personal competencies.

The correlation matrix in Table 2 shows the correlation coefficient between the independent

variables as identified for the research. A correlation coefficient indicates the strength of the

association between the variables. A correlation coefficient is considered significant if the p- value is

Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org

less than 0.05. As shown in Table 2, in the Indian Business organizations all the dimensions of personal

competencies like people success, task success, system success and self success have a significant

positive relationship with emotional intelligence.

It is observed that system success has the highest correlation with emotional intelligence followed

by people success indicating that both have a strong association with emotional intelligence. The next

highest is task success followed by self success. The above findings can help us to conclude that

employees in Indian organizations perceived that the focus on personal competencies in organizations

will be favourable for the existence and sustenance of emotional intelligence.

Table 2: Correlation between emotional intelligence and the dimensions of personal competencies

Variables

People success

Task Success

0.262**

System Success

0.290**

0.450**

Self Success

0.336**

0.366**

0.157*

emotional intelligence

0.480**

0.375**

0.516**

0.360**

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level, * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level

Multiple Regression Analysis

To gain an insight into the relationships further between the independent and dependent variables

and to identify the predictive relationships between the two sets of variables, if any, multiple regression

analysis was done.

From the correlation tables it can be seen that there are a many significant linear correlation

between the emotional intelligence and the constructs of personal competencies. Multiple regression

analysis was used to diagnose the relationship between a single dependent variable (criterion) and a

number of independent variables (predictors). A set of independent variables is weighted to develop the

regression equation or model to explain its relative contribution towards one dependent variable. The

dimensions of personal competencies were entered in the model as independent variables, while the

emotional intelligence was the dependent variable. The results are depicted in Table 3.

Table 3: Results of Regression Analysis

Independent variables

coefficient

p-value

People success

0.298

6.906

.000*

Task success

0.064

1.367

.172

System success

0.399

9.681

.000*

Self success

0.198

4.716

.000*

R Square = 0.421, Adjusted R square = 0.416, F–change = 22.239, Durbin Watson – 2.322

*Significant at 1%, * *Significant at 5%

Table 3 reveals the results of regression analysis. Independent variables explained 42.1% of

variance of emotional intelligence (F change = 22.239, p <.05). The result indicates that there are three

dimensions of personal competencies namely, people success (β= 0.298, p< .01), system success (β=

0.399, p< .01), and self success (β= 0.198, p< .01), which are positively associated with emotional

intelligence. It can be therefore proposed that these three dimensions of personal competencies are

directly responsible for presence and sustenance of emotional intelligence in Indian business

organizations. Moreover it can be concluded from the findings that people success and system success

of executives are the most important variables that explain the variance in emotional intelligence

followed by self success. Thus hypothesis H1, H3 and H4 were confirmed.

However, one of the dimensions of personal competencies namely, task success (β= 0.064, p> .05)

is not significantly related to emotional intelligence. Though it is one of the important competencies for

the executive to possess but the contribution made by it to emotional intelligence is not direct. Thus

hypothesis H 2 is not confirmed as its significance level is > than .05.

Kavita Singh

8 DISCUSSION

Indian economy is moving towards high-tech: high-touch, service based stage of development,

which presents new challenges for Human Resource Management. Competencies like managing one‟s

emotions, handling conflicts, teamwork, leadership, motivation, interpersonal sensitivity, skills at

negotiation and personal or internal qualities like empathy, initiative, adaptability, confidence and

optimism are much more crucial than academic competence, technical expertise and professional

education which constitute relatively only a small part of the picture. This transformation represents a

shift from traditional intelligence or cognitive intelligence measured by Intelligence Quotient (IQ) to

emotional Intelligence measured by Emotional Quotient (EQ). This study is designed to gain an insight

into the development of emotional intelligence on the basis of personal competencies. It has been

proposed in the study that it is essential for the executives of the present day business to possess high

emotional intelligence and personal competencies impact the presence of emotional intelligence.

The results of the study indicate that people success is one of the important constructs of personal

competencies and is strongly related to emotional intelligence. It therefore suggests that an

understanding of the ability to relate well with each other in the organizational context paves the way

for high emotional intelligence. This has been also supported by the study done by Singh (2007) where

it was found that ability to form effective relationships at work place results in high efficiency of

employees. Further Jordan and Troth (2004) also suggested that team performance was directly related

to the emotional intelligence of employees in organizations.

The study also indicates the importance of system success in predicting emotional intelligence of

executives in Indian Business organizations. The competency of system success fosters individuals to

focus on the organizational issues and identify with the organizational variables that control his or her

performance and satisfaction. This finding is supported with the study by Sy, Tram and O‟Hara (2006)

which reported a strong relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance and

satisfaction. Rosete and Ciarrochi (2005) also suggest that a strong association between emotional

intelligence and workplace effectiveness lead to system success. Further in a study on 100 bank

employees by Manila University (cited in D. Singh 2001) it was found that IQ scores were virtually

unrelated with job performance whereas, EQ had high association with job performance.

Besides this, self success, one of the dimensions of personal competencies also contributes to

predict emotional intelligence. Self success is an indicator of self-awareness which helps a person to

comprehend one‟s emotions and recognize its impact on their decisions. Stein and Book (2006)

suggested that and emotionally intelligent person is able to identify ones own feelings and to know the

cause behind them thereby leading to self success. Further a national survey of American employers

revealed that six of seven desired traits for entry-level workers were non-academic (Goleman, 1998)

and were related to the understanding and recognition of self and others‟ feelings and taking

appropriate actions (Sims, 1998)

However, task success was found to be a low predictor of emotional intelligence. This finding

highlights that the ability of the individual to focus on the current task in hand and do it effectively

does not have strong association with emotional intelligence. It could be more of a factor of cognitive

intelligence rather than emotional intelligence. This finding can be supported by Goleman‟s (1995,

1998) argument that task performance may not be directly related to emotional intelligence except for

providing a bedrock for other competencies to be successful. This has been further supported by

(Cavallo & Brienza, 2002). However this finding is in contrast to the study by Jaeger (2003) which

revealed a strong association between emotional intelligence and employee performance leading to task

success.

Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org

With respect to the model proposed the result of the present study can be depicted as follows:

Figure 2: Results depicted in the proposed model

Overall the study provides enough evidence to prove that any improvement in the level of personal

competencies of executives in the business organization is likely to improve the level of emotional

intelligence of the employees too. Therefore to enhance the emotional intelligence of employees in

organization, management has to aim to improve the levels of personal competencies of its employees.

Employees in organization have to be trained for developing their people focus so that they can have

better interpersonal relationship and connectivity in the organization. Management also has to dwell

upon the focus on the way the organization operates its systems and processes and train its people to

work effectively to work on the existing systems to add on to their levels of emotional intelligence.

Besides this individuals have to be emphasized to have a focus on completion of their tasks and lead to

its success along with the development of self. All these efforts on the part of the management will help

in creating an organization which comprises of emotionally intelligent employees and add to the human

capital of the organization.

9 CONCLUDING COMMENTS

The study reports an investigation of the relationship between the dimensions of personal

competencies and emotional intelligence of executives working in Indian Business organizations. In the

present study personal competencies were identified and studied as independent variables that influence

the presence of emotional intelligence. To enhance the emotional intelligence of executives

organizations have to enhance the competencies of people success, system success and self success.

Human Problems have three dimensions: material, social and metaphysical. Even after adoption of

all the external or environmental focus approaches like job enrichment or enlargement, management by

objectives, management by exception and participative management; every organization experiences

behavioural problems like low level job involvement, job satisfaction and productivity on the one hand

and high employee turnover and absenteeism, stress, communication gaps and lack of trust amongst

employees on the other hand. The above-mentioned approaches might have failed because they

consider the material and social dimensions of human resource only and not the emotional.

To grow and develop in the present kaleidoscopic scenario organizations need to constantly focus

on learning so as to gain sustainable competitive advantage. This requires organizations to undertake

continuous training and development efforts to impart cognitive as well as emotional learning. Most

management and executive development efforts are targeted ton work on non-intellective and non-

cognitive aspects or competencies such as self-management, motivation, teamwork, conflict

management, stress management, leadership, empathy, sales and customer relations etc.; so that the

individual and organizational goals can be attained by engaging organizational members in the desired

patterns of thought, feeling and action.

People

success

Task success

System success

Enhancement of Human Capital

Emotionally intelligent

behaviour

Self Success

H1: (+)

H2: (-)

H3: (+)

H4: (+)

Kavita Singh

Irrespective of the national boundaries, the outcome of this study can be universally employed to

the employees of any organization for the purpose of improving their emotional intelligence so that

their competence and effectiveness at the job gets enhanced.

The above mentioned findings can lead us to conclude that emotional intelligence is one of the

prerequisite for the success of any business enterprise. Emotional intelligence is an ability which can be

developed among people with exposure and training. The existence of personal competencies among

people has a major role to play in developing and enhancing the emotional intelligence of employees in

business organizations. An attempt to develop the personal competencies of executives in organization

can go a long way to improve their emotional intelligence. These efforts are to be made from both the

sides i.e., the management and the employees to create a culture in the organization in which

competencies are enhanced through training and development which then add up to level of emotional

intelligence of the working executives.

A major step in this direction can be the played by the leaders who have to keep their employees

in high self esteem and create an environment where there is openness in sharing of ideas and thoughts.

Employees have to be encouraged to develop their social skills which would lead to their greater

acceptance among their colleagues and subordinates thereby smoothening the work process leading to

success in the organization. There may be a discontentment that personal growth in the organizations is

not encouraged and rewarded though there are lots of possibilities to be experimental and inventive.

Management has to encourage people to experiment with the systems and processes leading to personal

and organizational growth.

10 SCOPE FOR FURTHER RESEARCH:

The present study leaves a lot of scope for further research in the area of Emotional Intelligence

and Personal competencies. Some of the specific ones are:

1. The researcher in future can do a comparative analysis to find the difference between

private and public sector organizations in relation to their levels of emotional intelligence

and personal competencies.

2. An international comparison between developed and developing economies will help us

become aware of the major transitions taking place in the area of emotional intelligence

at the global level.

3. An extensive study of formal implementation of the developmental programs to enhance

the emotional intelligence of executives in business organizations could be carried out to

facilitate effective and congenial work environment.

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