A STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND EMPLOYEE JOB PERFORMANCE AT A MULTINATIONAL COMPANY IN ZAMBIA

Abstract

This paper explores to empirically test whether Goleman’s four-domain Emotional Intelligence model would predict job performance at a Multinational company in Zambia. A quantitative correlation research study was conducted determining the degree of relationship between Goleman’s four domain of emotional intelligence and its effect on job performance in employees. The study begun by establishing the extent to which an employee acknowledges Emotional Intelligence skill through the use of a survey instrument. A total 164 subordinates were subjected to complete the questionnaire on Subordinate Emotional Intelligence Evaluation (SEIE). A total of 109 questionnaires among 255 employees (subordinate) were returned. All constructs were measured with existing scales. All items were measured on a seven point Likert-type scale where 1=strongly disagree and 7=strongly agree. Data was submitted to regression, correlation reliability and factor analyses using SPSS 22.0. The participant average age ranged from 30-40 years of age and 44% of participants had work experience of more than five years. Of these 78% were male while 32% were female. Self-awareness, Self-management, Self-motivation and Social skill were the four dimensions of emotional intelligence used to measure emotional intelligence scale and Job performance was used as the dependent variable. From the analysis Self-management, Self-motivation and social skill had‘t’ values of 2.270, 0.175 and 2.283 respectively with the significant p value of 0.025, 0.21, and 0.025 respectively. This evidently indicates that emotional intelligence factors affect an employees’ motivation to perform.