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ER
29,2 Emotional intelligence at work:
links to conflict and innovation
Abubakr M. Suliman
208 College of Business and Management, University of Sharjah,
Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, and
Received 17 January 2006 Fuad N. Al-Shaikh
Revised 18 April 2006
Accepted 25 April 2006
Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences,
Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims at exploring, for the first time in the Arab World, the role of emotional
intelligence (EI) in affecting work outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach – A self-administered questionnaire was used to survey 500
employees from 19 organizations in the United Arab Emirates. The findings are discussed in the paper
along with some recommendations for managers and researchers.
Findings – The results revealed significant differences between employees’ perceptions of emotional
intelligence, conflict and readiness to create and innovate.
Research limitations/implications – The sample represented only financial and service sectors.
The implications of the findings for researchers together with some future guidelines are discussed in
the paper.
Practical implications – The paper provides practitioners with some advice about understanding
and managing climate and conflict.
Originality/value – The paper is the first study in the Middle Eastern context that explores the link
between the multifaceted concepts of EI, satisfaction and performance.
Keywords Emotional intelligence, Individual conflict, Organizational conflict, Employee behaviour,
United Arab Emirates
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Evidence exists to suggest that intelligence alone will not explain our achievement at
work or life and that emotion plays a key role in organizational success. Rosete and
Ciarrochi (2005) exhibited that executives higher on understanding their own feelings
and that of their subordinates are more likely to achieve business outcomes and be
considered as effective leaders by their employees and direct manager. According to
Diggins (2004) the best managers need to possess emotional intelligence (EI) to make
decisions that based on a combination of self-management and relationship skills and
an awareness of how their behavior affects others in the organization. He argued that
emotional intelligence plays a greater role than “traditional” intelligence in determining
leaders’ and organizations’ success and concluded that EI helps people to:
.
be more aware of their interpersonal style;
Employee Relations
Vol. 29 No. 2, 2007 .
recognize and manage the impact of emotions on their thoughts and behavior;
pp. 208-220
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited .
develop their ability to judge social dynamics in the workplace; and
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450710720020 .
understand how well they manage relationships and how to improve.
Diggins (2004, p. 34) suggested that EI is the key to effective performance and to Emotional
staying ahead of the pack at times of organizational change. In his words: “In intelligence at
organizations, the inclusion of emotional intelligence in training programs has helped
employees to co-operate better and be more motivated, thereby increasing productivity work
and profits”. According to Brown and Brooks (2002, p. 327) “an understanding of
emotion, both our own and those of other people, plays an important part in
organizational life”. In this context, Mayer et al. (2004) stated that superiors need to 209
manage the mood of their organizations and that a mysterious blend of psychological
abilities known as emotional intelligence is what leaders need to accomplish that goal.
Thus, the concept of EI has gained some attention from scholars in this era of
up-side-down pyramid or customer-driven organizations because it has been perceived
as the way to survive in to day’s hostile, competitive and unpredictable environment.
Employees are no longer perceived as biological machines who are able to leave their
feelings, norms and attitudes at home when they come to work.
The current study aims to explore, for the first time in the Arab World, the
differences between employees and managers in the perception of EI, and how it affects
the perception of conflict, namely, frustration, goal conflict and family-work conflict.
The paper also examines the role that EI plays in shaping employees’ readiness to
create and innovate, as well as exploring the gap, if any, between self and
supervisor-rated emotional EI.

2. Literature review
Like most organizational concepts, different definitions have emerged in the
management literature for the concept of EI. Van Rooy and Viswesvaran (2004,
p. 72), for example, meta-analyzed the relationship between EI and performance. They
defined EI as “the set of abilities (verbal and non verbal) that en able a per son to
generate, recognize, express, understand, and evaluate their own, and others, emotions
in order to guide thinking and action that success fully cope with environmental
demands and pressures”. Meanwhile, the majority of scholars in this field will tend to
agree with Salovey and Mayer’s (1990) definition. They defined EI as individuals’
ability to monitor their own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among
emotions, and to use this information to guide thinking and action. According to some
scholars – , e.g. Johnson and Indvik (1999) and McGarvey (1997) – the more rich the
organization in terms of emotions, the higher an employee’s emotional intelligence is
likely to be. In order to enrich emotional intelligence there are some requirements such
as: a desire to change; self-reflection (if a person does not know what is going on inside
him/herself, it is unlikely he/she knows what is going on inside of others); listen to the
internal script that plays continuously; develop emotional control; practice empathy
and develop active listening skills; and validate the emotions of others.
On the other hand, the understanding of conflict and the role that it plays in
influencing employee behavior and work outcomes is now more important than it ever
was. Simply because the work environment is now richer in terms of conflict seeds
than before, e.g. diversity, hostility and complexity. In this context, Suliman (2003,
p. 330) argued: “The sophisticated methods that used these days by most organizations
in order to develop structures, departments and to arrange jobs have increased the
growing of counterproductive organizational conflict”.
ER Thus, there is a general agreement among researchers that analyzing work
29,2 outcomes helps to understand the processes by which the interaction of
employee/organization influences his/her behavior and work performance including
organizational conflict, and that:
Conflict is a fact of life, in organizations just as everywhere else, as people compete for jobs,
resources, power, acknowledgement, and security. Dealing with it is difficult because it
210 arouses such primitive emotions. People feel threatened (rightly or wrongly), and this creates
a version of the age-old stress response – fight or flight (Bagshaw, 1998, p. 206).
Moreover, most scholars incline to postulate conflict as an inevitable outcome of
organizational operation. And “since conflict in organizations is inevitable, it is critical
that it be handled as effectively as possible” (Rahim et al., 1999, p. 166).
Furthermore, there is no doubt that some of the essential ingredients of survival in
today’s global market are productivity, quality, creativity, and innovation. The
majority of scholars agree that organizations; which aim at surviving and competing in
today’s global market should create and innovate. Thus, such expressions as “innovate
or die?”; “innovate or evaporate?”; “innovate or vegetate” and “innovate or litigate”
which are commonly used in recent management literature indicating the necessity for
creativity and innovation as a concept with practical application and utility. According
to Tompson and Werner (1997, p. 586):
In most organizations, it is no longer sufficient for an employee simply to carry out his or her
essential job functions. Employees today are expected to take initiative and engage in those
behaviours which insure that the organization’s goals are realized. Moreover, the rapid pace
of change in many industries today has made the “job description” per se somewhat obsolete.
Abraham (1999) hypothesized that EI would have a positive effect on the
organizational outcomes of work-group cohesion, congruence between self- and
supervisor appraisals of performance, employee performance, organizational
commitment, and organizational citizenship. Abraham found that the participants
who reported higher levels of EI tended to show higher levels of job performance.
Likewise, Langhorn (2004) argued that emotional intelligence can improve
management performance. He reported that emotional intelligence was able to
predict the performance of general managers (co-opted in the study) with a significant
degree of accuracy ðF ¼ 2:44; p ¼ 0:003Þ; and that EI contributed 21 percent to this
specific type of performance (regression, R ¼ 0:45Þ: Langhorn also found that
emotional intelligence of the general manager was able to predict team satisfaction
with a reasonable degree of accuracy ðF ¼ 1:07; p ¼ 0:393Þ and team turnover with a
moderate degree of accuracy ðF ¼ 1:332; p ¼ 0:191Þ: Ashkanasy and Hooper (1999)
examined the perception and management of EI in the workplace. Utilizing the
proposition that affective commitment towards workmates is a necessary component
of social interaction, they argued that the showing of positive emotions is associated
with a high likelihood of success at work. Deshpande et al. (2005) studied the impact of
emotional intelligence on counterproductive behavior in China. They found that
respondents in the high emotional intelligence group perceived six of the 16 items to be
more unethical than the low emotional intelligence group. There was a significant
difference in aggregate counter productive behaviors between high and low groupings
of three (self-regulation, social awareness, and social skills) of the five facets of
emotional intelligence and over all emotional intelligence. Deshpande et al. (2005) found
no significant difference in over all counter productive behavior between the student Emotional
and manager sub-samples. intelligence at
Moreover, Wong and Law (2002) hypothesized that EI of superiors and
subordinates should have positive effects on job performance, therefore they tested work
the effects of leader and follower emotional intelligence on performance and attitude.
The results revealed that the EI of subordinates affects job performance and job
satisfaction, while the EI of superiors affects their satisfaction and extra-role behavior. 211
Furthermore, Wong and Law (2002, p. 243) reported: “for followers, the proposed
interaction effects between EI and emotional labor on job performance organizational
commitment and turnover intention are also supported”.
Jordan et al. (2002) attempted to study relationships between EI, team process
effectiveness and goal focus. The results suggest that the average level of EI of team
members is reflected in the initial performance of teams. They found that low EI teams
initially performed at a lower level than the high EI teams. In addition, Darling and
Walker (2001) argued that a primary key to successful organizational leadership is
effective conflict management. Therefore, they addressed the use of the behavioral
style paradigm as a tool to manage conflict effectively. Darling and Walker highlighted
the role of EI in affecting conflict. They supported Alessandra’s (1996) suggestion that
states: the major leaders are the people whose social intelligence put them at the heart
of the communication networks that would spring up during times of conflict, crisis or
innovation. Darling and Walker (2001) concluded:
Social scientists have developed new terms for the ability to get along better with other
people, particularly in conflict situations. These terms are “social intelligence” and “emotional
intelligence”. It has recently been concluded that one’s social intelligence or emotional
intelligence may be just as important as intelligence quotient (IQ) for being successful in
today’s business environment. In some cases, these different concepts of intelligence may be
more important than IQ (Darling and Walker, 2001, p. 235).
Easterby-Smith et al. (2000) examined the debates of organizational learning: past,
present and future they concluded that the innovative learning is obviously complex,
involving a mix of rational, intuitive, emotional, and social processes. Fenwick (2003)
was able to replicate Easterby-Smith et al.’s conclusion in her recent study entitled:
Innovation: examining workplace learning in new enterprises, she found that emotion
plays an important role in employees’ readiness to create and innovate. Fenwick (2003,
p. 130) concluded: “a central motivator was the link of their personal project to a
worthwhile social purpose, which embedded both identity and desire and which in turn
fueled innovative learning”. Park (2005) explored the link between an organization’s
emotional environment and its performance. He hypothesized that how far people
experience an organization as enabling them to feel capable, listened to, accepted, safe
and included affect their creativity and innovation. The research found that there was a
correlation between the extent to which staff experienced the five dimensions described
above, and the extent to which they were able to be curious, resilient, creative, strategic
and interdependent as well as manifesting other qualities associated with “learning
power”. Park concluded that organizations are more likely to enhance productivity and
creativity by focusing on the quality of their emotional environment than they are by
setting targets towards achieving those outcomes. Brooks and Nafukho (2006)
attempted to show the integration among EI, human resource development, social
capital and organizational productivity. They concluded that EI is clearly related to
ER organizational productivity and organizations would seek to employ and develop
29,2 workers with high EI.
Having considered the findings of the above studies, the current paper will attempt
to explore the role that EI plays in the perception of conflict (frustration, goal and
family-work) and readiness to create and innovate. Four general hypotheses were
developed for this purpose, namely:
212 H1. Participants’ demographics (gender, marital status, education, age and
nationality) and career backgrounds (organizational tenure, job tenure and job
level) influence the way they perceive EI, conflict and readiness to create and
innovate.
H2. Employees with higher levels of EI tend to show lower levels of conflict
compared to their counterparts who show lower level of EI.
H3. Employees with higher levels of EI incline to show higher levels of readiness
to create and innovate than those who report lower levels of EI.
H4. There will be no difference between immediate supervisors and employees in
rating the EI of employees.

3. Methods
3.1 Sample
Using self-administered questionnaire 500 employees were randomly selected and
surveyed in order to examine the study hypotheses. Employees were selected from 19
organizations based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The participants were
selected from three Emirates, namely, Abu-Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah, representing
top, middle and bottom levels of management. Out of the 500 questionnaires
distributed by the researchers, 448 were collected back, representing a response rate of
89.6 percent. Nonetheless, only 421 instruments out of the 448 were found to be suitable
for data analysis, i.e. the actual response rate is 84.2 percent.

3.2 Measures
3.3.1 Demographic and career variables. Gender, marital status, age and education
were measured using four different scales developed by the researchers and ranged
between two-point (e.g. gender) to six-point (nationality).
3.3.2 EI. EI variable was measured using 20-item scale developed by the
researchers. Two formats of the EI scale where used:
(1) The self-rated EI, as a subjective measure.
(2) The immediate-supervisor rated EI, as an objective measure.

3.3.3 Readiness to innovate and create (RIC). This variable was measured using
ten-item scale adapted from Suliman (2003) instrument of innovation. A five-point
Likert type scale was used.
3.3.4 Conflict. The study examines intra-individual conflict; which is conceptualized
as a multifaceted variable with three factors, namely: Frustration, goal conflict and role
conflict (work-family conflict). Using Likert’s five-point format, this variable was
measured through 30-item scale developed by the researchers.
4. Findings and discussion Emotional
In order to examine study variables, an SPSS package was used in analyzing the intelligence at
collected data. Table I presents the distribution of study sample according to the
demographic and career factors. work
Table II presents the results of correlation and reliability tests. As the table shows,
the alpha values for study measures ranged between 0.74 and 0.89. Provided that alpha
values over 0.60 are generally acceptable, it can be concluded that the scales used in 213
this study are highly reliable. Furthermore, gender and marital status showed no
significant relationships with study variables. However, education, age, tenure (job and
organization) and job level showed varied and significant relationships with EI, RCI
and conflict. As Table II shows highly educated participants showed less levels of
work-family conflict, frustration, and goal conflict than less educated employees. This
might be attributed to the high rewards that highly educated employees may receive
from their employers; which may help them reduce or overcome these conflicts. The
highly educated employees are likely to be positive about their psychological contract
with their organizations. Put differently, they may face no or less gap between their
expectations and their organizational rewards, compared to those who are less
educated.
Moreover, highly educated employees showed higher levels of readiness to create
and innovate than those who are less educated (Table II, r ¼ 0:33Þ: This result can be

Marital Organizational Job Job

Gender status Education Age tenure tenure level Nationality

Male 298
Female 123
Married 225
Non-married 196
High school or less 120
Diploma 085
First degree and above 216
35 years or less 242
36-46 years 092
47 years and above 087
7 years or less 235
8-13 years 098
14 years and above 088
7 years or less 228
8-13 years 101
14 years and above 092
Top level 085
Middle level 285
Bottom level 051
Emirate national 075
Arabic national 202
Asian national 085
European 021
American 007 Table I.
Other 031 The description of the
Total 421 421 421 421 421 421 421 421 study sample
ER related to the fact that highly educated employees have more chances of questioning
29,2 old established habits of doing work and trying new ways of doing things than those
who are less educated. In most organizations, and especially in the Arab world, less
educated employees are encouraged to stick to the established work methods rather
than trying new methods. In addition, highly educated employees are likely to have
higher levels of conceptual skills; which may help them to be more creative and
214 innovative.
In same way, Table II reveals that highly educated employees inclined to report
higher levels of EI (self and supervisor rated) than less educated. However, the
relationship ðr ¼ 0:37; 0:01Þ between self-rated EI and education is more significant
and stronger than the link ðr ¼ 0:26; 0:05Þ between education and manager-rated EI.
Highly educated employees may be able to express their feelings, communicate openly
and to understand others better than less educated. Due to certain organizational rules,
regulations and politics (formal or informal) less educated employees may not be able
to behave naturally, communicate openly, show their feeling and so forth which is clear
from the conflict results discussed in this paper.
Moreover, older employees with longer organizational and job tenure inclined to
report less levels of conflict (frustration, goal conflict and work-family conflict) than
their younger counterparts who have shorter periods of organizational and job tenure
(Table II). Since older and long tenured employees are likely to be in more senior
position and may receive higher organizational rewards they are likely to face less
levels of conflict. Moreover, age, job tenure and organizational tenure showed positive,
weak, yet non-significant relationships with readiness to create and innovate.
However, they reported positive and significant relationships with both self and
supervisor rated EI. The correlations (Table II) ranged between 0.25 (0.05) and 0.60
(0.01). However, the correlations between age and tenure, on one hand, and self-rated
EI, on the other hand, seem to be stronger and significant than that with
supervisor-rated EI. This finding indicates that older and longer tenure employees
showed higher levels of EI than younger and shorter tenure employees. As mentioned
earlier, older and longer tenured employees are likely to be experienced and working in
senior jobs and accordingly their “ability to monitor one’s own and others emotions, to
discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and
actions” (Mayer and Salovey, 1997, p. 433) is likely to be higher than those who are less
experienced and occupying less senior positions.
Table II presents the findings related to the link between job level and conflict. As
can be seen from this table, strong, significant yet negative relationships were found,
Cronbach’s alpha values ranged between 2 0.42 to 2 0.65. Thus, the more senior an
employee’s position in the corporate ladder the less the levels of work-family conflict,
frustration and goal conflict that he/she may encounter. This might be attributed to the
fact that higher level employees have better chances to decide on work matters, e.g.
what is to be done, how, when, where and who should decide the work- than lower level
employees. Accordingly, and as suggested earlier, they are able to strike a better
balance between their needs and organizational goals; which may lead to the reduction
of conflict level. Moreover, senior level employees inclined to show higher levels of
readiness to create and innovate than lower level employees. As can be seen from
Table II, a positive, significant and a moderate correlation ð/ ¼ 0:40; 0:01Þ was
reported. Higher-level employees are encouraged to try new ways of doing work and to
 EI EI
Work-family conflict Goal conflict Frustration Readiness to create and (self 2 rated) (supervisor 2 rated)

1. Gender 0.07 0.08 0.12 0.13 0.09 0.11

2. Marital status 0.04 0.11 20.10 0.08 0.04 0.03
3. Education 2 0.20 * 20.25 * 20.40 * * 0.33 * * 0.37 * * 0.26 *
4. Age 2 0.23 * 20.55 * * 20.56 * * 0.09 0.35 * * 0.25 *
5. Nationality 0.05 0.10 0.11 0.07 0.11 0.07
5.Organizational tenure 2 0.33 * * 20.38 * * 20.70 * * 0.05 0.60 * * 0.40 * *
6. Job tenure 2 0.45 * * 20.41 * * 20.66 * * 0.011 0.53 * * 0.49 * *
6. Job level 2 0.42 * * 20.61 * * 20.65 * * 0.40 * * 0.66 * * 0.59 * *
7. Supervisor-rated EI 2 0.52 * * 20.50 * * 20.49 * * 0.40 * * 0.30 * * (0.89)
8. Self-rated EI 2 0.33 * 20.22 * 20.18 * 0.30 * * (0.81)
9. Readiness to create and innovate 2 0.46 * * 20.23 * 20.51 * * (0.83)
10. Frustration 0.52 * * 0.59 * * (0.79)
10. Goal conflict 0.19 * (0.74)
11. Work-family conflict (0.82)
Notes: * Significant at 0.05, those marked; * * significant at 0.01. Reliabilities are in parenthesis
Emotional

Relationships between
study variables
work

215

Table II.
intelligence at
ER think beyond the established habits as well as to think more widely. On the contrary,
29,2 lower level employees may incline to be less risk takers and to follow the established
methods of work rather than thinking of modifications and/or trying new ways of
doing work.
Given the previous results it can be concluded that both career and personal factors
play important role in predicting EI, RIC and conflict, however career factors (e.g.
216 tenure) found to be more important than personal factors (e.g. age). Nonetheless, some
factors like gender, marital status and nationality didn’t report any significant results.
Thus, H1 is partially supported.
In order to examine H2, both Microfit and SPSS programs were utilized. The
summary of the findings are listed in Tables II and III. Nevertheless, the values of
normality, heteroscedasticity, serial correlation and coefficient listed at the end of
Table III are the average generated from four separate tests. As can be seen from
Table III, both self- and supervisor-rated EI have successfully predicted conflict factors
– i.e. work-family conflict, goal conflict and frustration. All t-values and correlations
values that appear in Table III are significant. However, the supervisor-rated EI seems
to be more stronger than self-rated EI in explaining the variance in conflict.
The negative sign of the correlation values indicate that the higher the EI (self and
supervisor-rated) the lower the work-family conflict, goal conflict and frustration.
Given these results it can be concluded that H2 is established. This finding supports
Darling and Walker (2001) and Alessandra’s (1996) arguments that mentioned earlier.
Provided that work-family role, goals and feeling of frustration are affected by emotion
and personal and social abilities, it is likely that those who are high in EI will be able to
actively and effectively cope with demands and pressures from other parties or work
context. On the other hand, those who are low in EI are likely to be weak in managing
their emotions and relations; which may lead to the development of conflict.
Furthermore, Table II and Table III results show that both self and supervisor-rated
EI are positively and significantly related to readiness to create and innovate.
Supervisor-rated EI was able to explain 16 percent ðr ¼ 0:40Þ of variance in readiness
to innovate, whereas self-rated EI has explained only 9 percent ðr ¼ 0:30Þ of variance.
Hence, employees with higher levels of EI have tended to report higher levels of
readiness to create and innovate than those who reported lower levels of EI. Put
differently, the higher the EI, the higher the readiness to innovate. Thus, H3 is
established. Since readiness to create and innovate is one of the work outcomes and

Variable T-value Sign. F Coefficient r p-value

Supervisor-rated EI – work family 5.86 0.00 0.47 2 0.52 0.00

Self-rated EI – work family 2.39 0.00 0.34 2 0.33 0.00
Supervisor-rated EI – goal conflict 4.95 0.00 0.25 2 0.50 0.00
Self-rated EI – goal conflict 3.37 0.00 0.04 2 0.22 0.03
Table III. Supervisor-rated EI – frustration 4.22 0.00 0.31 2 0.49 0.00
Results of single test Self-rated EI – frustration 4.09 0.00 0.04 2 0.18 0.05
(Microfit) and correlation Supervisor-rated EI – frustration 4.04 0.00 0.36 0.40 0.00
(SPSS-X) for EI (self- and Self-rated EI – frustration 2.23 0.00 0.30 0.30 0.00
supervisor-rated), conflict
and readiness to create Notes: Normality =13.04 (0.04); Heteroscedasticity =27.65 (0.000); Social correlation =0.17 (0.679);
and innovate Coefficient = 0.15
also one of the performance factors (Suliman, 2003), this finding supports the results of Emotional
Abraham (1999), Ashkanasy and Hooper (1999) and Wong and Law (2002). Employees intelligence at
with high levels of EI are likely to have more stable life with less conflicts and peace of
mind, and this is what creativity and innovation needs. To be creative and innovative work
you may need to have good relationships with co-workers and supervisors and
understand their feelings and emotions, i.e. we may need higher levels of EI.
Since employees and supervisors are two different groups, the independent t-test 217
together with the correlation test were applied to examine the last hypothesis. Table IV
presents the results.
From the t-test results in Table IV it can be seen that the t value of 21.71 is
significant at the 0.01 significance level. Since one of the assumptions for the validity of
t-test is homogeneity of variance, the Levene’s test for homogeneity of variance was
also obtained. The value of 279.75 is significant ð p , 0:05Þ; thus the variance is not
homogeneous, i.e. equal variances not assumed. These results thus indicate that
differences in the means for employees (60.01) and their immediate supervisors (49.00)
on performance with standard deviations of 7.10 and 12.02, respectively, are
significantly different. In addition, the correlation test results revealed that there is a
significant, moderate and positive correlation ðr ¼ 0:300Þ between self and
supervisor-rate EI. This means that the two variables would explain the variance in
one another to the extent of 9 percent. Since the value of this correlation is less than 1, a
difference between both ratings is established. Hence, H4 is rejected. In other words,
there is a significant gap between employees and supervisors in rating EI. When
comparing the two groups’ ratings of EI it was obvious that the ratings obtained from
the employees is higher than those obtained from their immediate supervisors. This
result is consistent with the literature on rating congruence that assumes a significant
gap between both ratings (e.g. Furnham and Stringfield, 1998; Yu and Murphy, 1993;
Cheng and Kalleberg, 1996). Furthermore, findings related to EI ratings also support
Hofstede’s (1984) argument about the features of collectivist and individualist cultures.
Since the UAE is one of the Arab countries; which are categorized as individualistic
cultures, it can be concluded that employees in the Arab world are likely overestimate
their EI when asked to rate it.

5. Conclusions and recommendations

This paper examined the concept of EI in the Arab world and how it is linked to some
important work outcomes, namely family-work conflict, goal conflict, frustration and
readiness to create and innovate. The study results revealed significant differences
between participants – depending on their backgrounds, e.g. gender, age, educations
and tenure – in the perception of EI, conflict and readiness to create and innovate.
Employees with higher levels of EI tended to report lower levels of conflict and higher

Levene’s
Variables Mean SD test T-value Sign. T Mean differences r p Table IV.
Results of the t-test and
Self-rated EI 60.01 7.10 279.75 0.00 21.71 0.00 10.09 0.30 0.00 correlation test for self-
Supervisor-rated EI 49.00 12.02 and supervisor-rated EI
ER levels of readiness to create and innovate. A significant gap was reported between self-
29,2 and supervisor-rated EI.
Based on the results of this study some recommendations, for both managers and
researchers, can be suggested. Managers need to understand that employees’ work
outcomes are likely to be influenced by their EI; which in turn is affected by their
interaction with their colleagues and managers. Superiors need to understand how to
218 manage their EI before trying to develop the EI of their subordinates. Moreover, the
conflict that employees face at their work is likely to have negative influence on their
readiness to create and innovate. Therefore, they may tend to participate, but not to
create, innovate and/or produce. To reduce the conflict, organizations must increase the
levels of EI for their employees’; which will help them to manage these conflicts
properly and reduce its negative impact on their life and work. Furthermore, managers
need to make sure that the communication system in the organization is effective and
efficient. However, the results of the current study suggest that managers must focus
first on the effectiveness of communication rather than efficiency in order to reduce the
gap between self-rated and supervisor-rated EI.
On the other hand, further studies are required in this field, especially in the Arab
world, before reaching some general conclusions about the issue of EI and how it
affects work outcomes. These studies may need to explore the effect of EI on the other
levels of conflict such as intra-group and organizational conflict. There is a need for
further investigations to explore the gap between self- and supervisor-ratings in some
other work-related concepts, to explain why such gap exists and how it can be bridged.

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ER Further reading
29,2 Suliman, A. and Iles, P. (1999), “An examination of the role work climate plays in influencing
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About the authors

Abubakr M. Suliman is Professor of HRM/OB at the College of Business Administration,
University of Sharjah. Research interests include: HRM/HRD, creativity and innovation,
performance management, justice and trust. Dr Suliman is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: [email protected]
Fuad N. Al-Shaikh is Professor of Business Administration, Associate Dean, College of
Economics and Administrative Science, Yarmouk University. His research interests include:
Small Business Management, Entreprenurship, Creativity, Innovatation and Strategic
Management.

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