Emotional intelligence of business executives in the indian corporate sector

Abstract

With the opening up of the Indian economy through liberalization, privatization, globalization and natural thrust towards information technology the tasks of Indian business executives has become more demanding. The challenges get multiplied when Indian executives have to work in diversified work cultures. The emotional intelligence intervention is partly a response to the problems that business executives face today. The companies need people who have both technical knowledge and social and emotional abilities which will enable them to delight the customers. Emotional intelligence can contribute to developing these skills and abilities that are linked with this aspiration. Hence, the statement of problem “Emotional Intelligence of Business Executives in the Indian Corporate Sector” was formed with the objectives of measuring the levels of emotional intelligence of business executives, to identify the weak components of emotional intelligence of business executives for the purpose of identifying their training needs, to ascertain the relationship between emotional intelligence and job stress, to relate the emotional intelligence of business executives with their respective overall performance and to broadly assess whether the existing training and development programs aim at strengthening emotional intelligence components of business executives. For carrying out the research, stratified random sampling design was chosen. The sample consisted of 400 managers working at the middle level managerial positions with a minimum of three years of experience and post graduation as their minimum level of education, spread over 2 major sectors, namely, service and manufacturing from the area covering Delhi and National Capital Region, Haryana and Punjab. The research used standardized scales for measuring emotional intelligence and occupational stress and a scale was developed for measuring job performance. The results of the study show that emotional intelligence can be used as a potential moderating variable in the stress process and improving the performance of the business executives. But most of the business organizations in India offer training programs which are aimed more towards developing the business acumen skills of their employees or in other words those components which can raise the productivity of employees in monetary terms. Developing emotional intelligence still remains a neglected element of training modules.