Taylor’s Case Study: How Emotional Intelligence Impacts Organisational Behaviour

28 Sep 2022

7 Min Read

Dr. Gan Jen Ling (Academic Columnist)

IN THIS ARTICLE

As we further develop into the wonders of technology in this 4th industrial revolution, is our ‘Emotional Revolution’ up to par? Emotional intelligence isn’t just a leadership buzzword, it really is the key to success. Yet many, of all different age groups, struggle with managing their emotional intelligence and, subsequently, their mental health.

Moving away from the traditional setting, employers have been and are focusing even more on hiring candidates with higher emotional intelligence to create better working environments. But how important is it, really, in our individual lives and the relationship fostered between the workplace and the individual?

Dr. Gan Jen Ling, Programme Director for the Master of Business Administration & Master of Management at Taylor's Business School shares how emotional intelligence affects employees’ perception of organisational justice, which in turn affects their voluntary positive behaviour and organisational citizenship behaviour.

Prioritising Emotional Intelligence to Increase Organisational Behaviour

_{^{Q: Why is it important for individuals to prioritise emotional intelligence, especially in regard to their work life?}}

A: Emotional intelligence is beneficial in changing your perception from a negative to a positive one. When you perceive things positively about what’s happening around you, your emotions and moods will also change for the better. When your mental health is at an optimal status and you practise emotional intelligence, your well-being and physical health will subsequently be enhanced as these different factors correlate with one another.

The area of research I’m working on focuses on how emotional intelligence affects employees’ perception of organisational justice, which in turn affects their voluntary positive behaviour and organisational citizenship behaviour*. This basically means how it affects one’s behaviour towards the organisation.

*Organisational citizenship behaviour is the voluntary positive behaviour among employees and their willingness to be involved with the company outside of their job scope. This is usually done when the employee feels satisfied and has a sense of belonging to the company.

_{^{Q: Why did you venture into emotional intelligence for your research?}}

A: Managing the workforce has never been easy and making the workforce feel satisfied in the workplace is even harder. I remember chatting with my colleagues and finding out that some don’t always perceive things positively despite the organisation providing the best treatment to the employees.

There’ve been many studies on how to improve employees’ job satisfaction where companies have been taking advice to improve accordingly. However, the satisfaction doesn’t sustain or last for long periods of time. Sooner or later, employees become demotivated and feel dissatisfied again, creating an endless process if we focus only on improving external factors.

This inspired me to look for factors that can sustain employees’ satisfaction and, after researching organisational behaviour, I understood how involving the cognitive process could be one of the sustainable factors. I then discovered more about emotional intelligence as one of the cognitive factors.

Once you’re able to improve your emotional intelligence, you’d better regulate your emotions and facilitate your thinking using them. That way, when you receive any treatment from companies, you tend to take it positively. Thus, improving your satisfaction level.

^{_{Q: What are your hopes for the research to create an impact on the public?}}

A: In line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), this project aims to achieve SDG 3, which focuses on the well-being and health of the community. There are many SDGs listed, but without well-being, we believe that it’ll be hard to achieve them. Hence, we started with emotional intelligence, particularly in the workforce.

Also, as I believe that awareness is the first and most important step when implementing something, our project aims to highlight and create awareness in the public and organisations.

We want to create the awareness that emotional intelligence can shape our perception and behaviour and that, with further implementation on how to improve employees’ emotional intelligence, it’ll be easier for others to believe in the importance of emotional intelligence.

Through the research, we hope that the research findings can highlight the effectiveness and importance of emotional intelligence in shaping our minds and behaviour. This can help the public and create an impact where we’re more open to touching topics related to mental illness. This can be done by being involved in potential emotional intelligence training and workshops to improve their well-being.

How Research Can Elevate Emotional Intelligence at the Workplace

_{^{Q: What are some of the milestones you’ve achieved and wish to achieve for your research?}}

A: Currently, we’ve been able to share findings that emotional intelligence does play a role in affecting employees’ perception of organisational justice which significantly affects the behaviour of their employees.

This finding is a helpful milestone that informs the management, regardless of the company, to, instead of focusing too much on extrinsic factors (such as monetary rewards and changes to the physical environment) to motivate the employees, look into how cognitive factors can help to shape our behaviour in organisations.

In our research, the findings showed that our cognitive factors, which involve emotional intelligence, can help to enhance our perception of organisational justice. When we’re able to perceive fairness in the organisation, we’d be willing to contribute to our workplace.

Our thinking shapes our intention, and intention shapes our behaviour. If we can start from the root cause, the issue might be able to be addressed in a more effective way.

For future plans, we intend to examine how emotional intelligence training and the intervention of mental health mobile phone applications is able to improve the public’s well-being and mental health.

_{^{Q: How can students be of aid to your research?}}

A: Students are the future workforce. If our area is focusing on the workforce, working with students allows us to understand the group of future workforces and also to prepare them for a better experience after they’ve graduated. I always find that, if you are reactive to certain problems, it might be too late.

Being proactive is one of the best attitudes when it comes to solving problems. I intend to start my emotional intelligence research among the students so that we can prevent some of the issues even while the future workforce is still in university.

Of course, the generalisation from students’ situations to the workplace could be limited, but it can still provide a bigger picture for us to move on and plan. Also, we’d wish to see how mental health mobile phone applications can help to improve this effectiveness. Students can benefit from this experiment by improving their emotional intelligence through training and also exploring the mental health mobile phone applications, monitoring their status, and seeking help if there is a need.

_{^{Q: If there was one piece of advice you could give fresh grads going into the workforce about mental health and organisational behaviour?}}

A: Be proactive — It can help a lot in your life. Through transitions and challenges, you’re able to prepare yourself for different situations in the future better. Keep in mind that, we can’t control what comes our way but we can control what’s within ourselves. So we should start with ourselves to change the environment around us.

Our emotions are one of the things we can control. Once we manage this by improving our ability through emotional intelligence, we’d be better able to manage our own emotions and also perceptions in any context. This preparation is beneficial to yourself and to others where you’ll be able to bring about positivity to the environment and see things change for the better.

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