ROLE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND WORKPLACE SPIRITUALITY ON PERSONAL EFFICACY

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to mainly examine the impact of Emotional Intelligence and Workplace spirituality on Personal efficacy. Present research tries to examine the relationship of key components of Emotional Intelligence (i.e. Self awareness, Empathy, Self motivation, Emotional stability, Managing relations, Integrity, Commitment, Value orientation, Altruistic behavior) and Workplace Spirituality ( i.e. Meaningful work, Conditions for community, Individual and the organisation, Positive work unit values, Organisational Values) with Personal efficacy(i.e. Cognitive, Affective, Motivational and Selective). Similarly, the mediating effect of Emotional Intelligence on the equation of Workplace Spirituality and Personal efficacy was also tested. Besides, the conditional effect of demographic features (which are widely acknowledged as the potential source of variations in behavioral outcomes) on the casual relationship of Emotional Intelligence, Personal efficacy and workplace spirituality was examined. Lastly, present study examined the occurrence of perceptual differences in study variables (emotional Intelligence, personal efficacy and workplace spirituality ) due to group differences (gender, type of organization and managerial levels). For the purpose of the study, primary response were collected from 331 Indian executives (male & female: junior, middle & senior level) of 20 Indian organizations (both from public as well as private sector) located mainly in northern part of the country. The states covered were mainly Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Gurgaon. Due to vast population size, judgmental sampling has been preferred for data collection. Collected responses were analyzed by using SPSS©20. After ascertaining the appropriateness of the data set, descriptive statistics (Mean, standard deviation, standard error of the mean and correlation coefficients) were calculated. In third phase of analysis, study hypotheses were tested with multiple hierarchical regressions were employed. Research findings suggest that the constituents of emotional intelligence and workplace spirituality can improve personal efficacy In addition, findings exhibited the importance of demographic variables on the casual paths among, emotional intelligence and workplace spirituality. The research has many key implications. Firstly, it established the reliability and validity of instruments for measuring the emotional intelligence, workplace spirituality and personal efficacy in the context of Indian organizations. ii This research makes an attempt to develop an integrated research model linking emotional intelligence, workplace spirituality with personal efficacy. Results of the study lead us to conclude that personal efficacy is enhanced by emotional intelligence and work place spirituality. It was established during the study that all the variables independent and dependent had a strong relationships with each others. Personal Efficacy played a significant role in an individual’s personality and amongst its various factors selective behavior followed by cognitive factor displayed a strong tendency to influence the same. Both emotional intelligence as well as work place spirituality work side by side to enhance personal efficacy. During the study it was observed that EI & WPS had certain common factors and some where these factors overlapp. These factor were value orientation, integrity and altruistic behavior. Similarly motivation factor was common in emotional intelligence and personal efficacy both. In fact in the study of behavioral aspects of OB, it is very difficult to have pure and absolute factors. Studies on EI and WPS both have enumerated several factors other than the ones covered in the above study This is mainly because of the fact that researches are going on all of them and standard definitions are yet to be coined. The present study was conducted mainly in Northern India specially in public and private sector organizations, where in the organizational culture displayed a fairly secure work environment which is reflected in the results. It is expected that had the sample size been larger and a wider section of organizations such as government, un-organized sector and cooperatives, banks etc. could had been covered in the study, we may have obtained somewhat different results. This is one of the limitations of the study. Results and outcomes of the study are relevant and provide scope for further research, the purpose is served to a larger extent. The research on work place spirituality is more significant as the Indian society and civilization is considered to be of spiritual background and the results clearly support this. The emergence of meaningful work, condition for community and individual & the organization as significant predictors of WPS has made a significant contribution to the study of the subject. The employees have tried to seek the answers to the question, ‘Who am I ? What am I looking for? And What am I doing?’. Feeling of community, brother hood and social concern are important for iii an Indian. If one looks at the calendar of activities throughout the year we find that people like to be associated with fair and festivals such as Holi, Deepawali, Eid, Good Friday, Christmas, Onam, Pongal, Baisakhi, Dussehra etc. There is a festivity even at the local level where people like to participate and display their connectedness with community, society and religion. The work place is also effected by these activities as people take leaves for celebrating these activities. These spiritual dimensions are reflected in individual beliefs and value system with that of the organization. Since in the present times workplace has become a larger community, spirituality has touched the individual in many ways which is amply reflected in our results. Emotional Intelligence remains to be one of a significant factors responsible for personal efficacy. Since our sample mainly included senior level executives as the average age of the sample was 39.72 years and their mean job tenure was 16.69 years. Majority of the sample included unit heads/heads of departments/group heads and therefore, it can also be inferred that EI and WPS are predictors of Managerial effectiveness and leadership.