50 A manager with a well-vested degree of emotional intelligence is also able to negotiate better contracts for the organization with suppliers or other business partners as they understand the emotions and reactions of other people in the negotiation exercise.
51 Landy (2005:412) has also discredited emotional intelligence as having no predictive value in that it adds little or nothing to the explanation of common outcomes related to academics or work success. He quotes the founders of the concept, Salovey and Mayer (1999) as having argued that entrepreneurial advocates of emotional intelligence had taken the product to the market before it was ready. The concept needed to undergo more scientific study before it could be claimed to be what it was to both the academic world and to society.
Yet another argument against emotional intelligence is that its unit of measurement using the Intelligence Quotient (EQ) is only measuring conformity and knowledge and not the ability the person possesses. In the same vein, self-reporting measures based on introspection are susceptible to faking (en.wikipedia.org). Also, the assessment of emotional intelligence is complex. The use of simple self–report questionnaires to
explore self–awareness has significant limitations
(www.team/technology.co.uk/emotional intelligence.htm). This begins to question the credibility and reliability of the Emotional Quotient as a measurement - meaning it could not accurately be used to assess an individual’s performance in an organisation and therefore can not be used in assessing organisation performance.
Conte (2005:437) claims that emotional intelligence measures are too diverse in both content and assessment methodology. There is also some doubt about their effectiveness in measuring constructs. He gives an example that comes from the study of Brackett and Mayer (2003) which showed a 4 percent of variance of the MSCEIT and Bar-On scales.
He also goes further to suggest that on a comparative basis of the ability–based emotional intelligent measures and the self–report measures, these will not motivate the scholars and researchers to take any interest in the subject in future due to lack of psychometric support.
Conte (2005:438) further strongly suggests that there are serious concerns that still need to be resolved for all these emotional intelligence measures. The issues that have been
52 questioned include scoring concerns and concerns that deal with discriminant validity for those emotional intelligent measures that are for self report. These concerns are more serious for the self–report than for the ability-based measures which are more promising.
The measures of emotional intelligence are diverse, and researchers have not subjected them to much study as they involve personality and general intelligence measures.
In spite of the above criticisms, the concept is here to stay looking at the amount of interest it has generated academically and commercially. Concerns should work as a wake-up call for further research in this field. Emotional intelligence is a growing phenomenon that has attracted interest from both proponents and critics. Catherine S.
Daus and Neal M. Ashkanasy (2005) are among the researchers that do not agree with the criticisms levelled above by Locke, Conte and Landy. Their argument is ably dealt with and presented in their joint publications reported in the Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Volume 26, pp 441 – 466 entitled, The Case for the Ability-based Model of Emotional Intelligence in Organizational Behaviour (2005) and The Rumours of the Death of Emotional Intelligence in Organizational Behaviour are vastly exaggerated (2005),
Based on their research, Ashkanasy and Daus (2005:441) have refuted the detailed weaknesses and loopholes in the emotional intelligence as a concept raised by the three researchers. They argue that emotional intelligence is an exciting and developing area of research in the field of Organisational behaviour and not a moribund one. Daus and Ashkanasy (2005:453 further argue that their refuting of claims attributed to Landy, Conte and Locke on specific cases is based on more recent empirical evidence presented in their second work:
1. Emotional intelligence is dominated by opportunist academics turned consultants who have amassed much fame and fortune based on a concept that rests on scanty and doubtful science.
53 1. The measurement of emotional intelligence is grounded on unstable, psychometrically flawed instruments, which have not demonstrated appropriate discriminant and predictive validity to justify their use.
3 There is weak empirical evidence that emotional intelligence is related to anything of importance to the organizations.”
This article as well as the first one in which the authors are justifying their support for emotional intelligence and refuting claims by the three cited and other psychologists critical of the concept makes interesting reading and they are therefore recommended for further follow up.
As research continues on the theory, a clearer way forward in defining the concept will emerge and a more solid and crystalline definition shall be established. It is agreed that this kind of intelligence involves emotions and the capacity to discern these emotions in oneself and in others. It is a fact that everyone one whether with a high or low intelligence quotient does express emotions which may also be positive or negative. It is obvious that emotions will be seen in many psychological forms as various people show the attributes in various ways. To put it another way as Robbins (2005:46) suggests you can not remove emotions from the workplace as you can not remove emotions from people.
All the three, Locke, Conte and Landy (Locke: 2005:429; Conte: 2005:437; Landy:
2005:422) though critical of the concept, tend to acknowledge the positive side of what the proponents have so far accomplished and have put forward their views as to what needs to be improved upon by researchers and advocates of emotional intelligence in future studies.
The arguments against emotional intelligence which indicate its weaknesses only give a motivation to researchers to continue perfecting information on the concept. I am of the view that that the contributions and benefits that emotional intelligence brings to
54 organisations and work highlighted in this chapter and other literature outweighs those criticisms. There are other ways in which emotional intelligence is seen and developed in organizations such as Theory U developed by Otto Scharmer and the cultural transformation tools by Richard Barrett. In both, favourable emotional states in the organizational leadership go a long way in improving social relations and cooperation with the workforce – a good requirement for employee motivation and productivity. This provided a major motivation to pursue the study of emotional intelligence as critical factor in solving performance problems and issues in the parastatal sector in Zambia.