Emotional Intelligence and Information Technology Professionals

Emotional Intelligence (EI) has garnered much popularity among researchers and practitioners as EI is widely believed to be associated with positive outcomes such as job satisfaction and good work performance. The intuitive explanation for the association is that EI creates good human relations and so EI results in positive outcomes. This research focuses on EI among information technology (IT) professionals and validates a model on EI and work outcomes. IT professionals are highly achievement-oriented and therefore the key hypotheses of this research posit that EI is positively related to personal accomplishment and job satisfaction, and that personal accomplishment is positively related to job satisfaction. Data were collected among IT professionals to test the hypotheses. The results show that personal accomplishment mediates the relationship between EI and job satisfaction. Further analysis of the results also indicate that personal accomplishment mediates two dimensions of EI - regulation of emotion and use of emotion - and job satisfaction. This study provided implications for the results obtained.