Organizational commitment: some linkages with emotional intelligence.
| Author | Shanker, Meera |
| Position | Report - Statistical data |
There is dearth of empirical research substantiating the efficacy of emotional intelligence (EI) in relation to organizational commitment (OC). The EI data when subjected to principal axis factoring technique with varimax rotation procedure yielded 9 factors such as emotionality and impulsiveness, self-awareness, depression, managing anxieties, problem solving focus, assertiveness, empathy, self-confidence and managing others. With respect to OC effective and continuance commitment emerged representing dedication to and continued membership with the organization. EI factors such as self awareness, problem solving focus, assertiveness, empathy, self-confidence and managing others strongly predicted affective commitment while emotionality, depression and managing others showed greater impact on the continuance commitment dimension.
Introduction
Emotional intelligence (EI) being an aspect of social intelligence (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) is the ability to perceive and express emotions intelligently. It is a capability based trait that facilitates inner thought processes, helps understanding and managing emotions for one's personal growth (Mayer & Salovey, 1997; Bar-On, 2000). On the other hand, organizational commitment (OC) is perceived as a multidimensional construct which includes employees' loyalty and personal involvement with the organization. As a construct it entails a strong desire to sustain association with and maintain goal and value congruency in the network of organizational relationship (Mowday, Steers & Porter, 1979) without producing conflicting outcomes (Sayeed & Mathur, 2000). The apparent concern is in the quest of performing well. Nevertheless organizations look forward to committed and emotionally intelligent employees, facilitating their stay in the organization for longer time.
Emotional Intelligence
Goleman (1998) popularized the concept of El by positioning it as the best predictor of work and life success besides attributing the quality of being a good predictor of work outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover and performance. Bar-On (2000) re-conceptualized the construct and tried to define and measure its five major components that comprised: (1) intrapersonal processes including self-awareness, (2) interpersonal processes that include skills of empathy and social responsibility, (3) stress management involving problem solving and reality testing skills, (4) adaptability that enhances stress tolerance and impulse control, and finally (5) general mood control denominating happiness and optimism in day to day living. Mayer and Salovey (1997) have independently created a four segment model of El such as: (1) emotional perception, (2) emotional facilitation of thought, (3) emotional understanding, and (4) emotional management. The first three components of El determine how well people understand themselves as bundle of emotions and the last component that includes empathy or empathizing processes determines how individuals manage themselves and relate with other people (Smigla & Pastoria, 2000).
Organizational Commitment
As against a personal construct which is EI organizational commitment (OC) is an attitude, defined as the relative strength of an individual's identification with, and involvement in a particular organization (Mowday, Steers & Porter, 1979). The approach to conceptualizing and exploring OC included attitudinal, behavioral, normative dimensions, thereby dubbing the construct as multidimensional (Suliman & Isles, 2000). Thus, OC is supposed to measure within the range of above classification any behaviors that encompass continuance commitment, affective commitment and normative commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991; Boehman, 2006).
Emotionally Intelligent Organizational Culture
An emotionally intelligent organizational culture deeply emphasizes relationship building, empathy and social responsibility (Sayeed & Shanker, 2009). These attributes enhance trust and commitment and facilitates connection between a new hire and the organization as a prospective employer. Emotional intelligence can play a positive role in developing organizational commitment (Goleman, Boyatzis & Mckee, 2002). Organizational success can be determined by the emotional tone set by the leader due to deeper understanding of self-awareness and others (Kets & Miller, 1984). It is also observed that the relationship between emotional intelligence and organizational commitment are not much examined however of the fact that these two attributes are researched with potential mediator variables (Abraham, 2000; Kafetsios and Zampetakis, 2008). By and large, researches documented positive relationship between emotional intelligence and organizational commitment (Khani & Lalardi, 2012). There is dearth of research in this area especially where levels of measurement involving the assessment of leader characteristics measured on emotional intelligence dimensions and the other being organizational characteristics assessed independent of those who experienced it. The present study is set out to explore emotional intelligence and organizational commitment of the leaders to establish empirical connections between these two constructs using factorially derived measures of both the constructs. The following hypotheses were, framed for testing the relationship:
H1 : Literature revealed meaningful relationship between emotional intelligence and organizational commitment (Yusof, 2006; Guleryuz, Guney, Aydine and Asan, 2008). Carmeli (2003) has shown that emotional intelligence is positively connected to affective commitment. It is therefore, hypothesized that there will be a positive relationship between various dimensions of emotional intelligence and affective commitment of the managers. It is therefore, hypothesized that there will be a positive relationship between various dimensions of emotional intelligence and affective commitment of the managers.
H2: As explored by Abraham (1999) emotionally intelligent employees will continue their services even in inadequate facilities setup, they will not impose their feeling of annoyance on their work and organization. Employees' needs force them to stay with the organization (Allen & Meyer, 1990). Hence, it is hypothesized that there will be positive relationship between emotional intelligence and continuance commitment dimensions.
Sample
Present study was conducted in pharmaceutical and IT companies located in Western India. The sample was obtained in a manner that ensured probability sampling methodology of sample selection. The sample represented a cross-section of industries with varied background and differing functional groupings of managers. Some degree of heterogeneity of the sample ensured varying level of attainments of leaders at different hierarchal levels of the organization. In all, 615 executives responded to the questionnaire, of which 11 per cent belonged to upper and 89 per cent belonged to middle management cadre. The age of respondents varied from 22 to 40 years with median age being 31 years. The work experience ranged from 4 to 21 years with its median at 10 years.
Emotional Intelligence Scale
Shanker and Sayeed's (2006) EI scale measuring emotional intelligence was used. Present version of the scale includes a few extra items and some of the items of the earlier version were modified for better comprehension. The scale was based on the overall theoretical concept advanced by Goleman (1998) and for the scale development used the conceptual framework of Mayer, Salovey and Caruso (2002) and Bar-On (2000). Respondents were expected to rate each item on a 7 point scale, 1 being "not at all true to me" to 7 being "to a great extent true to me". The items covered a variety of emotional facets of living such as experienced stress and reactions, optimism, positive or negative approach to life's problems and activities, feelings of confidence-diffidence, self-respect, self-awareness, feeling of despondency or looking at things and processes in an issue centric and problem focused way. feelings of adequacy, assertiveness and conscientious behavior etc. These items as input to principal axis factor analytic technique that were repeated several times revealed 9 interpretable factors covering 46 items only. These dimensions were labeled as: (1) emotionality and impulsiveness, (2) self awareness, (3) depression, (4) managing anxieties, (5) problem solving focus, (6) assertiveness, (7) empathy, (8) self confidence, and (9) managing others.
Organizational Commitment Scale
One of the most widely accepted scale originally developed by Mowday et al. (1979) was used to measure...
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