Emotional intelligence and employee innovation: Sequential mediating effect of person-group fit and adaptive performance

Introduction. - How emotional intelligence interrelates with employee innovation becomes a timely and crucial topic for research, for human resource and organizational psychology practitioners and academicians alike. Objective. - The study examined the mediating effect of person-group fit and adaptive performance on employee innovation. A sequential mediation framework explaining the relationship between emotional intelligence and employee innovation was constructed. This study differentiates itself from other similar studies on emotional intelligence and employee innovation since it suggests a novel approach to enhance employee innovation. Methods. - Electronic as well as paper-based surveys were conducted to collect the data and the analysis of 417 responses revealed that the hypotheses were strongly supported by the data. Results. - We found that a sequential mediation effect exists between person-group fit and adaptive performance. The findings offer a significant contribution to the field of human resources, since prior research has examined neither the simple mediating effect nor the sequential mediating effect of person group fit and adaptive performance between emotional intelligence and employee innovation. Conclusion. - The theoretical and practical implications of the findings were explored which have substantial value for human resources especially, for recruitment and training teams. (c) 2021 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.