View of STUDY OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AS PREDICTOR OF OCCUPATIONAL STRESS- AN STRUCTURE EQUATION MODELING APPROACH

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STUDY OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AS PREDICTOR OF OCCUPATIONAL STRESS-

AN STRUCTURE EQUATION MODELING APPROACH Pramod Kumar Bansod

Research Scholar at Oriental University Indore Dr. Rishi P. Shukla

Associate Professor, Oriental University Indore

Abstract:

Objective- Stress is negatively associated with health of an individual in literature.

Especially occupational stress is found to be one of the most important factors for individuals’ performance. Studies related to Emotional Intelligence (EI) have found to be associated with its impact on Occupational stress (OS). This study was focused on analyzing the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and the Occupational Stress and explored the role of Emotional Intelligence in predicting the Occupational Stress.

Design- The data was collected from 331 individuals i.e. 131 females and 200 males, working in Pharmaceutical industry with 3 years average experience. These data was collected online with the response rate of 18% over a period of 2 months from Jan. 2021 to Feb. 2021. Structure Equation Modeling was done for analyzing the relationship between the main construct of the study i.e. Emotional Intelligence and Occupational Stress using the Smart PLS 3.

Result- The result showed that the Emotional Intelligence was an important predictor of Occupational Stress among individuals working in Pharmaceutical industry in India. The study found that the high level of Emotional Intelligence was associated with low level of Occupational Stress among individuals working in Pharmaceutical industry.

Keywords: Occupational Stress, Emotional Intelligence, Structure Equation Modeling, Performance, EI Measurement.

1 INTRODUCTION

With rising competition in the market place, organizations are forced to change the way they used to work. Specially dealing with the biggest capital for any organization i.e. Human Capital, organizations are measuring and managing the behavioral aspects that can make humans more motivated and efficient in the workplace and cope up with the competition. In this regards the literature showed that these condition in the work place create a specific stress among employees. This occupational stress has associated with negative overall performance of the employee and need to be manage to improve the efficiency. This paper does not deal with the management of the occupational stress among employees rather it is more important to identify this occupational stress at the right time then the organization can prepare the strategy to deal with. Thus being one step advance tis paper tried to explore the predictors of this occupational stress in the workplace among employees. Literature review was done to identify and selected the suitable scale to measure the Occupational stress. It was observed in the literature that the occupational stress arise because of some personal as well as organizational factor. Studies in social sciences dealing with this found that the emotional wellbeing of the employee can reduce the stress or it will help to delay the process of stress. High emotional intelligence individual have some specific ability to avoid or significantly lower the development process of stress. Thus this study explored this relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Stress i.e. especial case of Occupational Stress.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Literature was reviewed with two main objectives as first to gain the latest development in this field and second to identify the scale for measuring these two constructs of the study i.e. Emotional Intelligence and Occupational Stress. Considering the effect of Emotional Intelligence (EI) on the accomplishment of employee, different specialists and researchers

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(Vernon et al., 2008; Goleman, 1995; Peridisa, Fredericksonb and Furnham, 2002;

Abdullah, Elias, Mahyuddin and Uli, 2004; Lam and Kirby, 2002; Jaeger, 2003; Panboli and Gopu, 2011) introduced a few perspectives about the connection between the two.

Panboli and Gopu (2011) discovered huge connection between's primary segments of passionate knowledge including self-inspiration, mindfulness, self-guideline, social cognizance, social abilities and understudies' scholarly accomplishment. Vernon et al., 2008; Abdullah, Elias, Mahyuddin and Uli, 2004; Panboli and Gopu, 2011 saw positive relationship among's EI and scholastic perdormance. Peridisa, Fredericksonb and Furnham (2002) broke down the part of attribute passionate knowledge in scholastic execution. The discoveries showed that employees with high attribute EI scores were more averse to have had unapproved nonappearances and less inclined to have been prohibited. Various creators have assessed the passionate knowledge build with the character measurements (Higgs, 2001; Godse and Thingujam 2010; Van Der Zee, Thijs, and Schakel, 2002. Others researched the relationship of self and different appraisals of enthusiastic insight (Van Der Zee) and reasoned that the passionate knowledge measurements had the option to foresee both scholastic and social accomplishment above conventional markers of scholarly insight and character (Van Der Zee). Researches have been directed to know whether passionate knowledge assumes a conspicuous part in defeating pressure and stress related results (Kauts and Saroj, 2010; Slaski and Cartwright, 2002; Duran and Extremera, 2004; Darolia and Darolia, 2005; Chabungban, 2005; Abraham, 2000; Spector and Goh, 2001).

The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) is the most widely used psychological instrument for measuring the perception of stress. It is a measure of the degree to which situations in one’s life are appraised as stressful. Items were designed to tap how unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloaded respondents find their lives. For the present study taking this as a base a new Occupational Stress scale was developed and Occupational Stress was measured with 5 item scale on a scale of 1 to 5. Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions (Mehta & Singh, 2013). Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others claim it is aninborn characteristic. Emotional Intelligence was measured with 10 item scale initially inspired from Deniel Goleman Scale of Emotional Intelligence. These scale were identified from the literature and then reconstructed for the Indian organization. The testing of the scale was done as the process described in the literature. Thus the conceptual framework was developed with taking Emotional Intelligence as the predictor of Occupational Stress.

3 DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 3.1 Subject

Explorative research design was considered at the beginning where unstructured interview of 11 experts were conducted and then after descriptive research design and methodology was adopted for the study. The population was all the individuals working with

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Pharmaceutical industry in India. These population were then again classified in two broad categories on the basis of the gender, and work experience. The samples for the study were having more than 3 years of experience in pharmaceutical industry. These samples were contacted online and responses were collected via Google form.

3.2 Process

The sampling technique was non probability sampling methods as the complete list of population was not available for mass to access and the nature of the research was suitable for non-probability sampling. This study was restricted to the pharmaceutical companies in Madhya Pradesh state of India and the responses were collected from most of the big cities of Madhya Pradesh. These responses from the samples were collected during a period of 2 months from Jan. to Feb. 2021. The predefined structured questionnaire was used for the study. The reliability was assured before collecting the final responses for the study. In total 1838individuals were contacted and finallymanaged to collect 331 completely filled responses. Thus the response rate for the study data collection was approx. 18%. Thus the total sample size for this study was 331 which were divided in two different groups. They were from 7 cities of Madhya Pradesh. There were 40% female compared to 60% male in the study.

3.3 Instrument

The research questionnaire included a modified version of Caplan's (1975) Job Stress Questionnaire (JSQ) & Deniel Goleman’s five construct Emotional Intelligence scale.

Cronbach alpha coefficients were calculated todetermine internal consistency. The intercorrelation matrix of scalesand items was inspected for convergent and discriminant validity evidence. The reliability was found to be 0.962for the 10 item scale used for measuring the Emotional Intelligence and 0.933 for the 5 item scale used for measuringthe Occupational Stress.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

For the analysis of relationship between the Emotional Intelligence and Occupational Stress, Structure Equation Modelling was used and this relationship was explored using the Smart PLS 3. The measurement and structural model was identified and explained. The model’s reliability and validity was measured. For reliability, Composite reliability was calculated and it was found to be significant. For the validity of the model Convergent Validity and Discriminant Validity was used.

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AVE Composite

Reliability R Square Cronbachs Alpha Communality Redundancy

EI 0.7495 0.9677 0.9629 0.7495

OS 0.7902 0.9496 0.8962 0.9336 0.7902 0.7082

The structure Equation Modeling results showed that the outer loading of all predictors were more than the 0.7. The AVE value was also more than the 0.5. The composite reliability was calculated as 0.9677 and 0.9496 respectively for Emotional Intelligence and Occupational Stress. Thus the reliability of the model was assured and the model was good enough to explore the relationship between the constructs of the study. As all the Average Variance Explained (AVE) values were more than the 0.5, thus the convergent validity of the model was assured. Further the Discriminant Values (DV) were calculated by taking the square root of the AVE values and then these DV values were compared with the correlation value between other constructs. This DV values must be more than the inter correlation value to insure the discriminant validity of the model. The DV values were more than the Correlation value and thus the discriminant validity was insured for the model.

EI OS

EI 1 0

OS 0.7467 1

Once the model reliability and validity was insured, the bootstrapping process with 1000 sample sets were performed and path analysis was done. The result of the bootstrapping is given below as:

Finally the overall impact of Emotional Intelligence on Occupational Stress was measured as 0.8962 i.e. 89% variance in Occupational Stress was explained by Emotional Intelligence.

Original Sample

(O)

Sample

Mean (M) Standard Deviation (STDEV)

Standard Error (STERR)

T Statistics (|O/STERR|)

EI -> OS 0.9467 0.9468 0.0019 0.0019 485.7846

The path analysis showed that the path from the EI -> OS was significant as the value of the t-test was 485, which was more than the 1.96 (t value with 95% level of confidence).

5 CONCLUSION

Organizations are growing and achieving its objectives because they have human capitals.

Organization which are able to manage this capital with more effectively outperform other organizations. This study found the strategic relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Occupational Stress. It was found that the employees with high Emotional Intelligence were found to be less stressed. These results are initial results on restricted region and

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need to be validated before taking into decision-making. Research are needed to be carried out to more focus toward the prediction of occupational stress via measuring Emotional Intelligence.

REFERENCE

1. Abdullah, M.C., Elias, H., Mahyuddin, R., & Uli, J. (2004). Emotional intelligence and academic achievement among Malaysian secondary students. Human Resource Management Papers, Islamabad:

National Institute of Psychology.

2. Abraham, R. (2000). The Role of Job Control as a Moderator of Emotional Dissonance and Emotional Intelligence - Outcome Relationships.The Journal of Psychology, 134 (2),169-184.

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6. Godse, A. S., & Thingujam, N. S. (2010). Perceived Emotional Intelligence and Conflict Resolution Styles among Information Technology Professionals: Testing the Mediating Role of Personality. Singapore Management Review, 32 (1), 69-83.

7. Goleman, D. (1998b). Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam

8. Goleman, D. (2001). Emotional intelligence: Issues in paradigm building. In C. Cherniss and D. Goleman (Ed's.), The Emotionally Intelligence Workplace. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

9. Higgs, M. (2001). Is there a relationship between the Myers-Briggs type indicator and emotional intelligence? Journal of Managerial Psychology, 16(7), 509-533.

10. Jaeger, A.J. (2003). Job competencies and the curriculum: An inquiry into emotional intelligence in graduate professional education. Res Higher Education, 44,615-639.

11. Kauts, Amit., & Saroj , Richa., (2010) Study of teacher effectiveness and occupational stress in relation to emotional intelligence.

12. Lam, L.T., & Kirby, S.L. (2002). Is emotional intelligence an advantage? An exploration of the impact of emotional and general intelligence on individual performance, Social psychology, 142,133-143.

13. Mehta, Sandhya, Singh, Namrata. (2013). A Review paper on emotional intelligence: Models and relationship with other constructs. International journal of management and information technology.

4(3),342-353.

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Annexure

A1 EI OS

EI1 0.8827

EI10 0.8628

EI2 0.8636

EI3 0.8816

EI4 0.8527

EI5 0.8645

EI6 0.8619

EI7 0.8582

EI8 0.8666

EI9 0.8622

OS1 0.8808

OS2 0.8899

OS3 0.8894

OS4 0.8826

OS5 0.9019

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A2

Original

Sample (O) Sample Mean

(M)

Standard Deviation (STDEV)

Standard Error (STERR)

T Statistics (|O/STERR|)

EI1 <- EI 0.8827 0.8827 0.0034 0.0034 259.2768 EI10 <- EI 0.8628 0.863 0.0039 0.0039 221.2618 EI2 <- EI 0.8636 0.8635 0.0037 0.0037 234.683 EI3 <- EI 0.8816 0.8815 0.0033 0.0033 270.0957 EI4 <- EI 0.8527 0.8528 0.004 0.004 215.1021 EI5 <- EI 0.8645 0.8646 0.004 0.004 215.4373 EI6 <- EI 0.8619 0.8619 0.0039 0.0039 222.2494 EI7 <- EI 0.8582 0.8582 0.0042 0.0042 205.5779 EI8 <- EI 0.8666 0.8669 0.0036 0.0036 239.3971 EI9 <- EI 0.8622 0.8621 0.004 0.004 213.8012 OS1 <- OS 0.8808 0.8807 0.0039 0.0039 225.9041 OS2 <- OS 0.8899 0.8899 0.0033 0.0033 272.1966 OS3 <- OS 0.8894 0.8894 0.0033 0.0033 270.1051 OS4 <- OS 0.8826 0.8827 0.0035 0.0035 251.7624 OS5 <- OS 0.9019 0.9018 0.0032 0.0032 284.6972