2009 International Conference on Management Science & Engineering (16th) September 14-16, 2009 Moscow, Russia

The Influence of Emotional Intelligence on Job Performance: Moderating Effects of Leadership

YAO Yan-hong1WANG Run-tian1Karen Yuan Wang2
1 School of Business Administration, Hunan University, P.R.China, 410082 2 School of Management of UTS, Australia, NSW 2007 Abstract: Theory suggests that individuals who are higher in emotional intelligence are likely to exhibit a higher level of performance. This paper studies the influence of emotional intelligence on job performance, task performance and contextual performance, and explores the moderating effects of leadership. The research results show that the emotional intelligence has a significant positive correlation with job performance, task performance and contextual performance respectively, and emotional intelligence has stronger effects on contextual performance than task performance. In addition, transactional leadership has no moderating effect on emotional intelligence-job performance relationship, and transformational leadership only moderates the relationship between emotional intelligence and contextual performance. Specifically, the relationship is stronger when the level of transformational leadership is low, which partly supports our hypothesis. Keywords: emotional intelligence, task performance, contextual performance, leadership performance are not made by the employees who get high diploma or ability, but those who can perceive emotions in others, regulate emotions in self, and handle the relationships with others. In the quest for competitive advantages, many organizations have sent their employees to attend various emotional courses, and teamed up with consultants and researchers to initiate various programs about emotions. For example, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) company established special funds conducted by Cavallo and Brienza, which were aimed at evaluating the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership success in J&J Company. The existing studies focused on the effects of emotional intelligence on task performance, and there is little research on the relationship between emotional intelligence and contextual performance. Particularly, most of these studies were carried out in western, and there is little empirical study to see if these results apply to China. So this paper will investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and task performance, contextual performance respectively in China. At the same time, we will explore the moderating effects of leadership.

1 Introduction
How to make the enterprises survive and last in the context of rapid economic development and severe global competition, the important issue is how to improve employees job performance which is related to the survival and development of enterprises. Since the publication of Emotional Intelligence edited by Goleman in 1995, emotional intelligence has been an emerging topic in the fields of psychology, education and management. Many researchers have proposed that emotional intelligence plays an important role in the workplace, for emotional intelligence can predict related individual work outcomes, such as job satisfaction and job performance (Bachman, Stein, Campbell, & Sitarenios, 2000; Prati, Douglas, Ferris, Ammeter, & Buckley, 2003; Wong& Law, 2002) [1][2][3]. Some theorists have even argued that emotional intelligence predicts individual performance in a variety of contexts, beyond the effects of established predictors such as general mental ability and personality (Bar-On, 2000; Goleman, 1995; Law, Wong, & Song, 2004) [4][5][6]. More and more leaders have been also realizing that high

2 Theory background and hypothesis

2.1 Emotional intelligence Emotional intelligence is from the concept of social intelligence which was firstly identified by Thorndike in 1920. Thorndike (1920) defined social intelligence as the ability to understand and manage men and women, boys and girls, to act wisely in human relations [7]. Gardner (1983) included intrapersonal intelligence and interpersonal intelligence into his theory of multiple intelligences [8], both of which are related to emotions. Intrapersonal intelligence refers to the ability to deal with oneself and symbolize complex and highly differentiated sets of feelings. In contrast, interpersonal intelligence is related to the ability to deal with others and make distinctions among other individuals. Although social intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and intrepersonal intelligence arent named as emotional intelligence, they belong to the scope of emotional intelligence. Salovey and Mayer (1990) firstly used the name of emotional intelligence to describe the

978-1-4244-3971-3/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE

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ability of people to deal with emotions, and gave the definition as the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor ones own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide ones thinking and actions [9]. Later, Salovey and Mayer (1997) modified the definition of emotional intelligence and they proposed that emotional intelligence involves the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth [10]. Based on this definition, they further suggested that emotional intelligence can be divided into four branches, which include perceiving emotions, using emotions to facilitate thought, understanding emotions, and managing emotions. In this study, we have used the Petrides and Furnham (2001) definition of emotional intelligence as a constellation of emotion-related self perceptions and dispositions located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies [11]. They also called emotional intelligence as trait emotional self-efficacy. This definition is in accord with the subjectivity of emotions. Its particularly difficult to apply truly veridical standard in evaluating emotional intelligence, so many researchers consider emotional intelligence as a constellation of dispositions and self-perceived abilities, not a class of cognitive-emotional abilities. 2.2 Job performance Benefits are deeply concerned by all organizations, while organizational benefits depend on individual performance. Thus, job performance should be paid more attention. In developed countries, job description is used to define job responsibilities, operation ranges, and performance standards. However, there is an increasing recognition that task performance cant capture the full range of job performance (Borman & Motowidlo, 1997; Rousseau, 1989, 1995) [12][13][14]. Employees dont only have to accomplish tasks designated by the formal contract between employee and organization, but also is expected to finish informal tasks. These informal tasks are related to the extra-role behaviors beyond formal role requirements, and are called contextual performance. Borman and Motowidlos studies in 1992 and 1993 have indicated that job performance can be divided into task performance and contextual performance, which deepened peoples understanding of performance. Task performance means that incumbents make a contribution on the technical core of organization through direct productivity operation and material or service support. These activities are related to the specific task which is required by organization. On the contrary, contextual performance is not directly relevant to the main compulsive task, but also is voluntary behavior including helping others, following organizational rules when personally inconvenient persisting with extra effort to

complete ones task. Contextual performance is significant to the whole organization, because it supports the organizational, social, and psychological environment in which task performance occurs, promotes communication inside and outside the organization, and relieves tense emotional reaction. Organizations are social systems wherein members interact with one another, as well as with external constituents (e.g. customers, suppliers). These interactions are naturally in great need of emotions which form the basis of human behaviors. High emotional intelligence employees can clearly perceive emotions of colleagues and managers and precisely understand the meaning of other behaviors, so that they can make accurate judgments on their working roles which are expected by others, and then carry out adaptive behaviors. Therefore, they are more harmonious and faster integrated into the organization, and achieve higher performance. For the members outside the organization, such as customers, employees with high emotional intelligence can really sympathetically understand the needs of customers, and solve problems from the perspective of customers. Compared with low emotional intelligence employees, they are capable of controlling their own emotions and keeping positive mood when facing complaint, challenges and stresses from customers, so they can easily win customers trusts and satisfactions. Furthermore, there are some evidences from empirical researches to support that emotional intelligence is positive with task performance. Lam and Kirby (2002) applied Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS) to test someones ability of perceiving, understanding and regulating emotions, and considered that global emotional intelligence, perceiving emotions and regulating emotions contributed more individual performance than general intelligence [15]. Day and Carroll (2004) found the positive relationship between emotions perceiving and performance of cognitive decision-making tasks when using Mayer, Salovey and Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) [16]. The results of the investigation by Law and his colleagues (2008) showed that emotional intelligence was an important predictor of individual job performance beyond effects of general mental ability [17]. Sun (2005) also suggested that general intelligence and performance had no significant correlation, while emotional intelligence impacted on performance significantly [18]. Not only does employees emotional intelligence have effect on task performance, but there is a probable positive relationship between emotional intelligence and contextual performance. Because emotional intelligence enables employees to recognize and understand how their coworkers feel, and then they respond appropriately. For example, when the colleagues succeed in their works, employees with high emotional intelligence will display great initiative in complimenting them and share the joy with them; and when their coworkers are in trouble, they will support and courage the coworkers, even give a

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hand voluntarily. In addition, high emotional individuals are able to comprehend organizational rules, and display high sensitivity towards extra-role behavioral exceptions. Because of these sensitivities, they tend to help the whole organization, such as putting more efforts into their works. Although the relevant empirical studies are scant, the results also support the relationship between emotional intelligence and contextual performance. Yu and Yuan (2008) proved that employees emotional intelligence is positive with their contextual performance, and leader-member exchange can partially mediate the relationship between managers emotional intelligence and employees contextual performance [19]. Additionally, some researchers concluded that there is a positive correlation between emotional intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior (Charbonneau & Nicol, 2002; Carmeli, 2003; Carmeli & Josman, 2006; Yu & Zhong, 2008) [20][21][22][23]. Based on the above analysis, we propose the following hypotheses: H1: There is a positive correlation between employees emotional intelligence and their own job performance. H2: There is a positive correlation between employees emotional intelligence and their own task performance. H3: There is a positive correlation between employees emotional intelligence and their own contextual performance. 2.3 The moderating effects of leadership Burns (1978) proposed the concept of transactional and transformational leadership [24]. Bass developed and perfected this leader theory. Transactional managers only concern the short-term goal of organizations. To transactional managers, its more important to achieve individual performance than organizational vision. In the theory of transactional leadership, the main roles of leaders are defining the role of employees, setting rewards after employees achieve the organizational goals, and providing the path to accomplish the tasks and obtain the rewards. Employees with high emotional intelligence are able to understand what the leaders want them to do, and strive to achieve targets set by leaders, so that they can get the rewards which are provided by leaders. Conversely, in the theory of transformational leadership, transformational managers give employees motivation, thought stimulation and care by leaders charisma to make them pay more attention to organizational benefit to their own benefit and more devoted to their work. According to Maslows hierarchy of needs, transformational managers are keen to enhance the employees intrinsic motivation and hope to raise them to self-realization level of needs in the hierarchy, so they can surpass their original expectation of work and not confine to the exchange of benefit. Transformational managers guide employees to go beyond their own interest by bringing higher ideals and values forward and

make them step up from everyday selves to better selves. Many researches show that transformational leadership has a strong predictive power on organizational citizenship behavior (Zhang & Qiao, 2006; Li, Meng & Shi, 2006; Podsakoff, MacKenzie & Morrman, 1990) [25][26][27]. Based on the above analysis, we suggest that different types of leadership have moderating effects on the relationship between employees emotional intelligence and job performance. So we hypothesize that: H4: The emotional intelligence-task performance relationship is moderated by the extent of transactional leadership. Specifically, the relationship is stronger when the level of transactional leadership is high. H5: The emotional intelligence-contextual performance relationship is moderated by the extent of transformational leadership. Specifically, the relationship is stronger when the level of transformational leadership is high.

3 Method
3.1 Samples and data collecting In this study, the department managers and their employees from Changsha, Zhuzhou, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen in mainland China were investigated on the principle of convenience sampling. Two structured questionnaires were used. One survey administered to the employees was used to assess their own emotional intelligence and their direct managers leadership. The other survey was administered to employees direct managers, whereby data relating to employees task and contextual performance. Every questionnaire filled out by employee was marked with a particular code in order to match with the response from the direct manager. The sample for this survey consisted of 335 manager-employee dyads. 196 respondent employees were male, accounted for 58.5%. 3.2 Measurement Emotional intelligence: In our investigation, we applied Short Form Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire developed by Petrides and his colleagues. This measurement, consisting thirty items, was a self-report scale. All items ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The Cronbachs alpha for this scale was 0.76. Job performance: Two aspects of job performance were measured: task performance and contextual performance. We assessed task performance using eleven items of the scale developed by Tusi et al (1997). Contextual performance was evaluated by the measurement reported by Scotter and Motowidlo (1996) and translated into Chinese by Wang et al (2003). All items were rated on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The Cronbachs alphas for task performance and contextual performance were 0.79 and 0.84 respectively.

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Leadership: The twenty-four items measuring transactional leadership as developed by Yao and Jing (2008) were adopted. The measure of transformational leadership was assessed by a scale developed by Li and Shi (2005). Both of these two scales were developed in the context of Chinese culture, and the response format was a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The Cronbachs alphas of transactional and transformational leadership were 0.61 and 0.89 respectively.

High level of transformational leadership Low level of transformational leadership

Contextual performance

4 Results
Table 1 reports the means, standard deviations, Cronbachs alphas, and correlation coefficients of variables used in the analysis. The results in Tab.1 show that employees emotional intelligence have significant and positive correlations with job performance (r=0.54, p<0.01), task performance (r=0.45, p<0.01) and contextual performance (r=0.48, p<0.01). They provide preliminary supports for H1, H2, and H3. From the correlation coefficients, we also know that emotional intelligence has stronger effects on contextual performance than task performance.
Tab.1 Descriptive statistics and correlation among variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6

Emotional intelligence Fig.1 The moderating effects of transformational leadership on the relationship between emotional intelligence and contextual performance Tab.2 The results of hierarchical regression analysis: The moderating effects of transactional leadership Model 1 Step1 EI Step2 TS Step3 EITS Model 2 Task performance .446* .083 -.074 R
2

F 82.895* 43.081*

R2 .199* .007

F 82.895* 2.815 2.876 F

.199 .206

.213 29.842* .007 Contextual performance R2 F R2

1.EI 3.53 .37 (.76) 2.JP 3.90 .43 .54* (.86) 3.TP 3.78 .54 .45* .82* (.79) 4.CP 3.98 .47 .48* .90* .48* (.84) 5.TS 3.37 .48 .18* .32* .16* .36* (.61) 6.TP 3.76 .69 .28* .41* .14* .52* .62* (.89) Notes: EI=emotional intelligence, JP=job performance, TP=task performance, CP=contextual performance, TS=transactional leadership, TF=transformational leadership Numbers in parentheses are Cronbach alphas. * p<0.01 (two-tailed tests)

Step1 EI .476* .227 97.795* .227* 97.795* Step2 TS .286* .306 73.236* .079* 37.853* Step3 EITS -.069 .312 50.046* .006 2.850 Notes: EI=emotional intelligence, TS=transactional leadership *p<0.001 Tab.3 The results of hierarchical regression analysis: The moderating effects of transformational leadership Task performance Step1 EI Step2 TF Step3 EITF .446** .017 -.035 R
2

Hierarchical regression model was applied to test the effect of moderator. The results of regression were presented in Tab.2 and Tab.3. We find that transaction leadership has no moderating effect on the relationship between employees emotional intelligence and task p>0.05), contextual performance (=-0.074 R2=0.007 performance (=-0.069R2=0.006p>0.05). H4 is not supported. Interaction term for emotional intelligence and transformational leadership was significant to p<0.01), contextual performance (=-0.133 R2=0.020 not to task performance (=-0.035 R2=0.001 p>0.05). It means that transformational leadership moderates the relationship between employees emotional intelligence and contextual performance, which partly supports H5. The moderating effects were shown in Fig.1.

F 82.895** 41.392**

R2 .199** .000

F 82.895** .110 .576

.199 .200 .201 R2

27.751** .001 Task performance F R2

5 Discussion
In this study, employees and their direct managers

F Step1 EI .476** .227 97.795** .227** 97.795** Step2 TF .422** .391 106.476** .164** 89.243** Step3 EITF -.133* .411 76.890** .020* 11.186* Notes: EI=emotional intelligence, TF=transformational leadership *p<0.01, **p<0.001

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were investigated to research on the effects of emotional intelligence on job performance and the moderating effects of leadership on the relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance. H1, H2, and H3 are supported by the empirical evidences, which prove that employees emotional intelligence has a significant positive correlation with job performance. Specifically, employees with high emotional intelligence have higher level of task and contextual performance in comparison with low emotional employees. Our results are in accordance with the foreign scholars (Lam & Kirby, 2002; Day & Carroll, 2004; Carmeli & Josman, 2006; Sy, Tram & OHara, 2006) [15][16][22][33], which suggest that the results in western culture are also applicable to the Chinese cultural background. We advise that emotional intelligence should be seriously taken account as a standard of recruiting or promoting. In addition, employees can be sent to take part in some emotional training in order to raise performance levels. Some studies have proved that participants in the scientifically designed courses about emotional intelligence can improve the ability of perceiving emotions, controlling emotions and self-motivation (Slaski & Cartwright, 2003)[34]. The empirical evidences show that only transformational leadership can moderate the relationship between emotional intelligence and contextual performance. In particular, the effects of emotional intelligence on contextual performance are stronger when the transformational leadership characteristic isnt remarkable. In our opinions, transformational managers require employees to do some extra-role behaviors which are beneficial to organizations. On the other hand, employees are also ordered to finish in-role works as strict criterions by organizations. Its obvious that these two requirements are contradictory. For the resources of organizations are limited, if employees spend more time on contextual performance, there is less time for them to complete tasks. Forced by some factors, such as dismissal risks, they will focus on the in-role tasks, not on the requirement of transformational managers. Additionally, Fig1 reveals us that transformational managers can improve low emotional employees contextual performance. Thats because employees with low emotional intelligence cant recognize some emotional information, and they need instructions from transformational managers. There are still some limitations in our study. First, we obtain evaluations of leadership only from employees, not from without the managers opinions. Second, we just used the overall emotional intelligence scores to investigate the correlation between emotional intelligence and task performance, contextual performance. In our further research, we shall explore the effects of the dimensions of emotional intelligence on job performance. Last, the moderating impacts of leadership are needed more empirical studies.

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