CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Emotional Intelligence is a concept focused on how effectively people work with others in an organization. Emotional Intelligence has been said to be an important but still relatively understudied element of competence in an organization (Ashkanasy and Daus, 2005; Giardini and Frese, 2006). Emotional Intelligence can be referred to as an ability to recognize and regulate emotions in an organisation, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions (Giardini and Frese, 2008; Mayer, Salovey and Caruso, 2008). Employees can handle their emotions accurately and use certain behaviors in the workplace that allow them to gather better information, understand others’ behavior or make better decisions about their activities, that result in better performance on the job which would by extension improve organizational growth and development (Kim, Cable, Kim and Wang, 2009).

The concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI) is one of the most commonly researched topics in the corporate world and human resources. Emotional intelligence has been found to be an integral predictor of various crucial organizational outcomes and workforce performance, such as job performance, job satisfaction, organizational workforce behaviour, and organizational commitment amongst others. Emotional intelligence involves the effective management of feelings of employees or workforce of an organisation so that they are expressed appropriately, therefore enabling people to work together towards common goals in a corporate environment. When the executives of an organisation values feelings, so will the employees or the organisation’s workforce. Thus, if the management feels optimistic, confident, creative, flexible, tolerant, respectful, and compassionate, the workforce will likely mirror these feelings naturally. Organizational commitment is said to be an important prerequisite to organizational growth and effectiveness. It has been shown by researches that organizational commitment has the ability to forcast a variety of organizational outcomes, such as increased job performance, reduced turnover and withdrawal cognitions, lower absenteeism, and increased organizational workforce behaviour (Sinha and Jain, 2004; Herscovitch, Topolnystsky, Stanley, and Meyer, 2002; Meyer and Allen, 1997; Mathieu and Zajac, 1990). Moreover, committed employees or workforce who are highly motivated to contribute their time and energy to the pursuit of corporate organizational goals are increasingly acknowledged as the primary asset available to any organization (Pfeffer, 1998). In the past decade, management researchers claim that emotional intelligence has an impact on performance and productivity of any workforce. High emotional intelligence also affects all aspects of management (Jordan, Ashkanasy and Hartel, 2002). Today, new findings show more attention to emotional intelligence on job functions (Steve, 2004). Human performance can simply be defined as a result of the actions set to actualize a goal based on a specific standard. This may include actions or behaviour of all non observable mental processing (e.g., problem solving, decision-making, program planning, reasoning) (Bailey and Robert, 2003). Emotion is a powerful psychological action that can affect behaviour and performance in an important way especially as it has to do with workforce productivity in any organisation(Brown et al., 1997).

1.2. STATEMENT OF THE GENERAL PROBLEM

Emotionally healthy behaviour can be seen in an individuals’ ways of thinking; recognizing, managing and expressing feelings; and choosing effective behaviours in other to enhance productivity. Emotions are of high significance in organizational and corporate settings especially when dealing with human resources and workforce. Emotional health is important for employees; it influences what they do, who they meet, how they look and feel and it makes decision about their productivity. The poor performance of employees of the Nigerian workforce may not be unconnected to the poor attention of complete negligence of the emotional intelligence and its influences in the Nigerian corporate environment; the negligence has ultimately contributed to the economic recession currently confronting the nation.

1.3. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The major aim of the study is to examine the effect of workforce emotional intelligence in an organization. Other specific objectives of the study are;

1.    To examine the influence of emotional intelligence on organizational commitment among employees.

2.    To examine the level of emphasis placed on emotional intelligence in Nigerian corporate organization.

3.    To recommend ways of improving the emotional intelligence of Nigerian workforce in other to improve organizational growth.

1.4. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1.    What is the effect of workforce emotional intelligence in an organization?

2.    What is the influence of emotional intelligence on organizational commitment among employees?

3.    What is the level of emphasis placed on emotional intelligence in Nigerian corporate organization?

4.    What are the ways of improving the emotional intelligence of Nigerian workforce in other to improve organizational growth?

1.5. RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

Ho:  Workforce emotional intelligence does not have an effect in an organization.

Hi:   Workforce emotional intelligence does have an effect in an organization.

1.6. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The result of this study will be of immense importance in educating stakeholders in the education sector on the importance of emotional intelligence and job satisfaction and how they can be used as a tool to promote organizational commitment among Nigerian workforce. the study would also be of immense importance to students, researchers and scholars who are interested in developing further studies on the subject matter.

1.7. SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The study is restricted to the effect of workforce emotional intelligence in an organization with Elomaz hotel in Lagos state serving as the case study.

LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

Financial constraint– Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

Time constraint– The researcher will simultaneously engage in this study with other academic work. This consequently will cut down on the time devoted for the research work.

REFERENCE

Abraham, C., and Yousman, Z., 2009. The Relationship among Emotional Intelligence, Task Performance, and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors, Copyright: Lawrence Eribaum Associates, 403-419.

Bakhshi, A., Sharma, A.D, dan Kumar K., 2011. Organizational Commitment as predictor of Organizational Citizenship Behavior. European Journal of Business and Management, ISSN 2222-1905 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2839 (Online), Vol. 3, No. 4

Chen, Z.X & Francesco, A.M., 2003. The relationship between the three components of commitment and employee performance in China, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 62, 490-510.

Cuhadhry, A. A., and Usman, A., 2011. An investigation of the relationship between employees emotional intelligence and performance. African Journal of Business Management. Vol. 5 (9), pp. 3556- 3562.

Darmawan, D., 2013. Principle of Organizational Behavior. Pena Semesta. Surabaya.

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