Emotionally savvy employees fail to enact emotional intelligence when ostracized

Emotional intelligence (EI) has been endorsed as a personal asset in navigating social environments. By extoling EI's positive implications for work outcomes, advocators encouraged organizations to integrate EI into selection and training programs. Nevertheless, according to meta-analytical results, the predictive validity of EI for various work outcomes may not be so promising as expected. A possible reason is that high EI individuals may not effectively enact this emotional strength under certain circumstances. However, what influences employee EIenactment at work remains unclear. Drawing upon whole trait theory, we posit that by workplace ostracism, a salient threat to need for belongingness, may hinder employee EI-enactment and in turn constrain EI's positive impact on service performance. Data collected with a weekly diary design demonstrated that weekly workplace ostracism weakened the relationship between employees' general level of EI and their weekly EI-enactment and reduced the indirect effect of EI on weekly service performance via EI-enactment. By showing that workplace ostracism stretches EI to its limit, we make the first attempt to uncover a boundary condition for employee EIenactment and offers a valuable insight into when EI fails to make a difference.