Emotional Intelligence,Diversity,and Organizational Performance: Linkages and Theoretical Approaches for an Emerging Field

Abstract

Twenty-first-century organizations are expanding its business across globe to cater varied needs of society and in this process different people join such organizations from various walks of life giving rise to a diverse workforce. It is presumed that organizations having varied people with creative and problem-solving skills will create competitive advantage for organizations. However, it is pertinent to mention here that these people belong to different locations and different cultures and may have differences in values, language, behaviors, preferences, and norms which may lead to friction/complications with other people. In spite of such differences, they are expected to work as a cohesive team to achieve desired performance of the organization. However, at the same time it is observed across industries that there are certain unknown impediments which lead toward disengagement at workplace, resulting into high employee turnover, and consequent poor performance of organization. Several scholarly studies in this context have been carried out to understand and minimize the complexity based on different inferences. Many positive psychologists apprehend that understanding and appreciating the emotions of other person will give the organizations a rational upshot in terms of managing diversity at workplace. Taking their cognizance we hypothesize that if organizations are able to hire the employees with good emotional intelligence (EI) skills, it would be helpful for smooth functioning of team or else the employed personnel should be trained properly in EI to accept challenges during work force diversity. Therefore, this conceptual review is going to critically examine the behavioral patterns of workforce, organizational interventions, and leadership challenges to address them in the context of diversity at workplace.

Keywords

Globalization diversity organizational policies emotional intelligence management practices

Introduction

Workplace diversity is getting attention of scholars across the globe in recent years as it happens to be the lifeblood of every organization. In contemporary times, business organizations are going global to spread its presence through diversity to maximize its revenues. In order to sustain an influential leadership position in the competitive market, HR teams of MNCs are inviting people from different cultures and locations to be a part of diversified workforce. The term diversity may sound simple but it is a combination of holding and managing the aspirations of people from different cultures, race, gender, age, skill, cognitive style, group, education, background etc. (Kenely, 2000; Perry, 1997). Therefore, diversity brings significant challenges to the organization and HR functionaries are expected to play a vital role in handling issues pertaining to individual differences arising out of diversity (Shen, Chanda, D’Netto, & Monga, 2009). Michael Armstrong (2006) has added that in order to support HR functionaries line managers are equally expected to join their hands in handling such heterogeneous and diversified workforce. To confront this kind of challenges, understanding and appreciating each individual’s emotions is of paramount in work settings (Goleman, 1995).

It is assumed that to manage the emotions of a diversified workforce a professional irrespective of position and hierarchy need to be emotionally intelligent (Zeidner, Matthews, & Roberts, 2004). In this connection, studies have found that line managers with sound emotional intelligence (EI) skills encourage the workforce in the organization to create healthy environment such that organization can prosper and be able to withstand the competition in the global market (James, 2008; Maznevski, 1994; Richard, 2000). This conceptual review is an attempt to understand the behavioral dynamics influencing diversity and its presence and importance in the organization. It is also trying to explain the role of EI in managing a diverse workforce.

Workplace Diversity

Diversity at workplace is differences in people and is generally defined as acknowledging, understanding, accepting, valuing, and celebrating differences among people with respect to age, class, ethnicity, gender, physical and mental ability, race, sexual orientation, spiritual practice, and public assistance (Esty, Griffin, & Schorr-Hirsh, 1995). Further, it is also defined that diversity as an aggregate team-level construct represents differences among members of an interdependent work group with respect to a specific personal attribute (Jackson, Joshi, & Erhardt, 2003). Many managers and scholars agree that diversity is a positive factor in organizations (Bergen, Soper, & Parnell, 2005; Schermerhorn, Hunt, & Osborn, 1998) as they seek diversity as a way of increasing business competency (Diversity Inc., 2002) while offering value addition through gathering various creative thoughts (Ahmed, 2007). Diversity provides a distinct advantage in an era when flexibility and creativity are keys to competitiveness.

An organization needs to be flexible and adaptable to meet new customer needs. Heterogeneity promotes creativity and heterogeneous groups have been shown to produce better solutions to problems and a higher level of critical analysis (James, 2008). This can be a vital asset at a time when the organization is undergoing tremendous change and self-examination to find new and more effective ways to operate. Diversity improves the bottom line, provides competitive advantage, builds the ability to compete in global markets, and improves business performance for achieving higher employee satisfaction, enhancing relationships with multicultural communities, attracting multiple talents and skills and maintaining a workforce that mirrors the customer base (McCuiston, Ross Wooldridge, & Pierce, 2004).

In short, workplace diversity is a people issue, focusing on the differences and similarities that people bring to an organization (Hackman et al., 2000). Though diversity is a broad aspect but it can be divided into two major dimensions: primary dimension and secondary dimension. Primary dimensions are those factors that are either inborn or exert extraordinary influence on early socialization (e.g., age, gender, race, ethnicity, physical and mental abilities, and sexual orientation). Whereas the secondary dimensions are the factors related to individuals and some extent to others with whom individual is closely related with and they are in the form of (e.g., educational background, geographical location, income, marital status, parent status, religious beliefs, work experience etc.).

Globalization crafts workforce diversity in organization; however, it is a kind of blessing as well as curse depending on management style of an organization (Ashkanasy, Hartel & Daus, 2002). This is because it provides expertise in terms of process, production, and profitability (3P)—thus enriching the human and social capital which contributes to organizational performance. On the other hand, in contemporary times, managing a heterogeneous workforce stands as the real challenge for HR functionaries as various behavioral dynamics like trust–mistrust, conflict–collaboration; sharing–withholding sabotage etc. get involved. For this detailed understanding of the different dimensions of diversity and its associated behavioral patterns is warranted.

Behavioral Patterns of Diverse Workforce

As far as factors affecting workforce diversity is concerned, mainly we need to focus on both internal and external factors. External factors on behavioral dimensions are predominantly get influenced by family, reference group, social class, subculture, culture, and geographical boundary. However, these factors are uncontrollable and hence managing them is quite hard. Therefore, necessary emphasis needs to be given on internal psychological factors which lead to molding the behavioral patterns of diverse workforce.

Human being is the most complex creature of nature and is impossible to predict because of its unique psychological factors. Here we would like to explain some of the important psychological factors those are responsible for augmenting workforce diversity in an organization. Primarily, during our interaction with senior management functionaries of Indian MNCs we found that motivation, personality, perception, values, adaptability, attitude, commitment, job satisfaction, and rational thinking are some of the major key factors. Therefore, we have tried to analyze each of these factors in detail:

Motivation: Motivation is the process that arouses, energizes, directs, and sustains behavior and performance (Luthans, 1998). It is argued by practitioners, people working with diverse workforce tend to have different levels of motivation. According to Rosa Schmidt of the Rutgers University Centre for Management Development, Millennial, born between 1980 and 2000, have a sense of belongingness to civic duty orientation, achievement orientation, and able to handle multiple tasks at a time. Members of Generation X, born between 1960 and 1980, have a curiosity to learn continuously for the personal growth and organizational growth as well and always look for challenging assignments. Baby Boomers, born between 1943 and 1960, look for appreciations from the others for whatever they contribute. Those born between 1922 and 1943 try to keep their hard efforts in every task and who gives due respect to authority. It is important that managers of present day diversified organizations catering the need to understand the needs and priorities of each type of employee and understand what motivates them (Kupperschmidt, 2000).

Attitude: Attitude is basically a positive or negative feeling one have on objects, people, or events. At the same time, people have a kind of unawareness on their unconscious attitudes because they carry repressed feelings to certain external aspects of diversity as they are unable to verbalize and communicate with it properly (Mohammed & Angell, 2004). By recruiting employees who will be responsive to organizational practices in their conscious and unconscious note and by transmitting the significance of prevailing values in one hand, and dismissing those who do not fit through their attitude in the other organizations can hope to establish a robust and stable attachment among members.

Moral and ethical values: It can be defined as “concepts or beliefs about desirable end states or behaviors that transcend specific situations, guide selection or evaluation of behavior and events, and are ordered by relative importance” (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987). Every individual will have their own moral values which can guide him/her as their code of conduct and while working with a team it gets affected by others leading to questioning their own moral values. However, a diverse workforce with an optimal intelligence with them is able to understand others beliefs, values, and at the same time they can respect their moral and ethical values.

Perception: Employee in diverse workforce perceives that there would be lots of consequences while different people join together and share their ideas in a work setup, resulting to un-comfortableness and insecurity (Triandis, Kurowski, & Gelfand, 1994). But while hiring people, if the organization considers EI as an imperative competency and based on the criteria if they select workforce it would be easy to change their perception toward diversity and cope up with team members.

Adaptability: Survival of the employees in changing market condition and business processes a bit crucial when they are not adaptable/flexible to the organization policies and culture. Therefore, when an organization is inviting people with different cultures, locations will get excited to join together, but employees with flexible/adaptable patterns in them only can highly endurable toward changes happening in the organization (Colarelli, Roger & Constantine, 1987; Wilson, & Iles, 1999). It has been presumed that employees trained with EI can be more flexible/adaptable and create the competitive edge to the company. Employees with high EI likely to deal people effectively and can be flexible to the changes in the organization.

Personality: According to Kinicki (2008), personality represents a stable set of characteristics that are responsible for a person’s identity. There are different personalities exist such as extroversion, introversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience (Goldberg, 1993). When heterogeneous teams are joined together for fulfilling the common objective different personalities influences its teams. Therefore, to understand the role of each personality by every individual professional is important in organization as it shows that how people are expected to behave and work. In order to hold the different personalities at work, people should possess the emotional skills.

Commitment: The state of being dedicated to a cause, and commitment as a state of being in which an individual becomes bound by his actions and it is these actions that sustain one’s activities and involvement (Salancik, 1977). In a diverse workforce committed employees are the value addition to organization as they are devoted toward organization they will try to encourage others to get involved. Interestingly, several empirical studies found positive relationship between EI and commitment (Adeyemo, 2007; Jordan, Ashkanasy, & Hartel, 2002; Humphreys, Brunsen, & Davis, 2005). Hence it is understood that people with high EI tends to committed toward organizational goals.

Job satisfaction: Satisfaction arises when an individual’s job fulfills his expectations, standards, and values. Locke (1969) has defined job satisfaction as a “complex emotional reactions to the job,” whereas Smith et al. (1969) have conceptualized job satisfaction as “feeling or affective responses to facets of the situation.” In addition, job satisfaction is often considered as a proxy for an employee’s well-being at work (Grandey, 2000). Still it is debatable among researchers and practitioners that, does diversity shows impact on job satisfaction of employees? It is presumed that people who are able to manage their emotional and social interactions at diverse workforce setups effectively are more satisfied than others.

Rational thinking: Rationality is thinking before acting as rational thinkers take decisions on the basis of objective and profitability, whereas emotional thinkers consider subjective factors as an important ingredient for judgment (Markič, 2009). Because of rational thinking there are two types of group that gets emerged in an organization, masculinity and feminist. Masculinity group concern more about rational decision making and objective fulfillment but feminists are more concerned about care emotions and subjective behavior. These two factors form a kind of workforce diversity which creates challenge for HR functionaries because a balanced thinking of rationality as well as emotions is necessary to manage workforce diversity.

Research Gap

While in the past many organizations addressed the issue of diversity from the standpoint of compliance, in recent years there has been a shift in focus from diversity to inclusion. Inclusion is a kind of work environment in which all individuals are treated fairly and respectfully, have equal access to opportunities and resources, and can contribute fully to the organization’s success (Lopez, 2006). Whereas social identity theory is a theory developed to understand the psychological basis of discrimination that augments inclusion in an organization. However, during this process people with same category gets a feel belongingness and forms group’s called in-group, and there are people feel uncomfortable with the in-group and they stand out of the group creating an out-group. This stands as a challenge and to address this kind of sensitive issue which is primarily related with behavioral factors and psychological factors individuals are expected to be emotional intelligent. Therefore, we have felt to conceptualize the situation as the organization’s values and creating a person–organization fit through EI will become a meaningful intervention in the area of behavioral and management science.

Dimensions of Emotional Intelligence and Its Influence in Diversified Environment

Previously emotions were ignored while studying organization behavior but latter on it was found that employee’s emotions are playing significant role in the organization. Therefore the term of “emotional intelligence” discovered by Salovey and Mayer (1990) has defined as a type of intelligence that provides capabilities to control or monitor others feeling as well as employee emotions. This facilitates the information gathered in order to guide one’s thinking and action. Therefore, EI is involved in the capacity to perceive emotions, assimilate emotion-related feelings, understand the information of those emotions, and manage them. It is often measured as EI quotient (EQ) which includes the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotion so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth. It has also been proved that while IQ does not increase beyond adolescence, emotional quotient can be developed throughout life since it is largely learned (Goleman, 1996).

Lack of EI use to open door to conflicts in the organization whereas organizations catering diverse workforce when a single conflict arises and if it cannot be controlled instantaneously number of other consequence will add up (Fleishman, & Harris, 1962). In order to control impact of conflicts on organization, manager or leader should be focused in handling and it can be possible when a leader is having good EI skills (Ayoko, Callan, & Hartel, 2008). EI skills have been divided into four categories: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management (Salovey, Woolery, & Mayer, 2001).

Self-awareness: When strong negative emotions are triggered, the limbic system within the brain is activated, obstructing functions of the brain and putting the individual in a potentially volatile, reactive state. High EQ people working in a diversified organization recognize this and learn to neutralize their internal, automatic reactions. They proceed with caution, keeping their reactions in check. Low EQ people, on the other hand, get externally focused on the person or situation due to which the problem has been caused and allow their reactions to hijack their behavior. Recognizing and identifying one’s own reactions is first set and is essential for enabling self-management skills.

Self-management: Self-management is the skill set that enables one to exert conscious control over one’s behavior in a situation where the reactions could sabotage the outcome that one want to achieve. In a diversified environment, high EQ people have the ability to explore possible strategies to achieve whatever outcome they want.

Social awareness: Low EQ people tend to make false assumptions in the heat of emotion. They often assume that there is a negative intent behind the behavior of others. On the other hand, high EQ people turn it to others and are capable of establishing empathy and look for positive intentions behind negative behavior.

Relationship management: In a diversified environment low EQ people often lose their patience when they get to be emotionally charged up (Gowing, 2001). They are likely to react in the heat of the moment, with destructive behavior that undermines their future relationship with that person. High EQ people remain aware of the fact that how they interact in the present time is going to determine the relationships in the future.

Organizational Interventions for Managing Diversity and Nurturing EI

In order to keep the employees engaged in diverse teams, organizations should focus on developing EI among individuals by providing trainings and conducting awareness camps on EI and its advantages (Carmeli, 2003). These are the three major aspects in handling diversity, and nurturing EI skills plays a major role and they are in the form of:

Organizational policies

An organization’s commitment to diversity is reflected in the extent to which diversity policies and procedures are mutually understood and communicated (Cox, 2001). Nevertheless, diversity issues including short- and long-term agency concerns are rarely discussed in any consistent fashion (Allison, 1999). Diversity policies are expected to be in alignment with organizational mission and vision. Numerous organizations have recognized and attempted to respond effectively to the demographic shifts in the workforce by launching diversity initiatives, hiring diversity consultants, and offering an array of diversity training programs (Boyatzis, Stubbs, & Taylor, 2002; Kalev, Kelly, & Dobbin, 2006). The organizational policies need to be enabled through:

Developing leadership: A leader is the person who influences the people around. Today’s workplace and global economy requires emerging and established leaders to work effectively with people from broad and diverse backgrounds. It requires individuals who understand international customer and client needs, as well as, the needs of a multicultural workforce. Being able to work in an ever-expanding marketplace requires a different set of skills and knowledge. Leaders are now expected to move seamlessly across organizations and successfully work with people with diverse expectations. This ability to transcend one’s own frame of reference and cultural preferences is called “trans-cultural competency.” Trans-cultural competency requires individuals to understand cultural differences, to know how to withhold judgment, develop a deeper understanding of the differences, and to facilitate mutually acceptable solutions. Similarly, if the organization is able develop the leaders with good EI skills, diversity can be handled properly and the employees may develop sense of belongingness toward each other and organization as well (Pauchant, 2005; Zhang, & Bartol, 2010).

Creating an affable culture: Culture is the face of any organization to external world. Organizational culture plays an important role to attract heterogeneous pool of talent in organization. Indeed it is essential role of management to understand the various cultural backgrounds of different locations, countries while designing policies. Sackmann and Friesl (2007) found that members of same cultures restrict the communication themselves rather they are not willing to disclose group members because of psychological factors. Line managers and HR managers need to ensure that safe working place and fairness in treating diverse workforce and develop a culture of respecting each other.

Reengineering: Business process reengineering primarily deals with modifications in structures and in processes within the business situations to be adaptable and abreast with technology and competition. It is a systematic review of the business process of an organization to develop sustainable competitive edge. When an organization deals with diverse work force to understand the people from various locations or from various backgrounds, the process should be designed in such a way that employees’ difference should be considered. Such practices will give raise to sense of belongingness to understand each other.

Management practices

Managing diversity means acknowledging people’s differences and recognizing these differences as valuable; it enhances good management practices by preventing discrimination and promoting inclusiveness (Van Der Vegt, & Bunderson, 2005). Good management alone will not necessarily help you work effectively with a diverse workforce (Weigand, 2007). It is often difficult to see what part diversity plays in a specific area of management. Diversity initiatives depend on the working philosophy of individual staff. However, there is lack of information to staff from the leadership. This creates a gap between whom we think we are serving, whom we would like to serve, and who will really serve. The following management practices can prove to be of help for augmenting diversity management:

Executive training: Organizations can provide training to its top level management to develop the emotional skills because when top level management is emotionally intelligent as a top down approach it will direct bottom level employees to be tactical in handling people when diverse workforce working together (Sanchez & Medkik, 2004).

Strengthen communication: People with high EI typically have excellent communication skills. This is because they have developed better communication through understanding the body language of people around. Good communication also means knowing how to deal with negative emotions. One simple strategy over here is giving required scope for “venting” negative emotions—or frustrations about setbacks—in a constructive way. For example, if people are upset, set aside five minutes of each meeting for complaints and frustrations, and let the team know that their criticisms won’t be frowned upon. The facilitator can keep this light hearted by using a stopwatch; when five minutes are up, then the team members should move on and focus on an action item, or something that they can control. It is worth to create fun ways to acknowledge and deal with stress or tension. Another important and often overlooked communication tool is listening. Being a leader it is expected that he/she need to teach everyone of team to use active listening skills, and to respect other people when they are speaking. When people are obviously not listening, call them out on their behavior. Last, if one thinks that the group does not discuss and analyze decisions fully, make sure that they question decisions and avoid groupthink. It is better to play devil’s advocate and force a discussion about the issue at hand. Ask why everyone is agreeing, and, again, encourage quieter team members to speak up.

Encourage healthy conflict: People with high EI know how to engage in conflict in a healthy way, where everyone’s perspective is respected when they communicate their views. This type of conflict can strengthen people individually and within a group, and can lead to personal growth (Robinson & Creighton, 1998). Teach your people good conflict resolution skills. Make it clear that conflicts should never get personal, and that whoever “has the floor” gets the full attention of everyone else in the room. Set ground rules, so that everyone knows what is and is not fair behavior.

Set specific learning goals: Goal setting is found to be one of the most effective organizational interventions that can be used to increase employee performance and to align employee behavior to a unique direction (O’hora & Maglieri, 2006). Your team members will have different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to their own EI. For example, some people might be poor communicators, others might have little self-awareness, and some might be lacking in empathy. First, help each person discover their strengths and weaknesses. One can do this by performing a personal SWOT analysis (El-Said, 2013). It may be necessary to provide extra support and guidance for team members with low EI, as they may have low self-reflection.

Next, set clear, specific goals to help each person work on their weaknesses. For example, one person might be a poor listener, so his goal could be to use active listening techniques four times per week for the next four weeks. Personalized goals like this will keep each person motivated.

Perceived inequity

Most of the organizations welcoming diverse workforce into organizations to create a pool of most efficient talent, at the same time it is observed that there are very less opportunities for women and minorities. Argyris (2003) has found that it is not remarkable for managers to feel like to clone themselves; to hire people who resemble them in working style and approach at workplace. This organizational cloning makes not only provides increased comfort levels with co-workers but also allows one to cultivate sense of continuity in the agency steady with the existing management culture (Cox & Blake, 1991). Consequently, Allison (1999) found that these practices get to be harmful to diversity goals and limits the ability of the organization to become increasingly inclusive. Selecting or hiring employees based on the rule “he is color of me” become the basis for the loss of a huge talent pool from organization.

Build optimism: The ability to think positively is an important part of EI. You can help your people think positively by stopping self-sabotaging behavior or statements. For instance, if you hear someone say “I’m not very good at writing reports,” or “I’ll never be able to make a presentation in front of the group!” remind them of their strengths and thank them for the good work that they are doing. Keep in mind that positive thinking does not mean ignoring bad news and avoiding issues. It means acknowledging bad news and rationally deciding how to handle it, as well as searching for the good in each situation and learning from every mistake.

Social architecture: Social architecture is the conscious design of an environment that encourages a desired range of social behaviors leading toward some goal or set of goals. Organizations should encourage social architecture; as it stands as the idea toward bridging the social relationship between individuals in order to create sound interactions among each other (Hickman, & Creighton-Zollar, 1998). It is believed that proper design of these bridges will lead organization’s common goal which leads to organizational performance as a whole. People who are good at EI skills can maintain more relations and flexible in managing change.

Managerial Implications

Diversity is a certainty in today’s business workplaces. To be successful in working with and gaining value from this diversity requires a sustained, systemic approach and long-term commitment. Success is facilitated by a perspective that considers diversity to be an opportunity for everyone in an organization to learn from each other how better to accomplish their work and an occasion that requires a supportive and cooperative organizational culture as well as group leadership and process skills that can facilitate effective group functioning. Organizations that invest their resources in taking advantage of the opportunities that diversity offers should outperform those that fail to make such investments.

Human resource professionals, line managers, and in-charges of diversity management practices should consider analytical approaches while handling issues. Gathering adequate data and using robust statistical tools to analyze data are needed to appreciate the outcomes of diversity within organizations. Currently, organizations typically assess their diversity efforts by simply comparing attitudes, performance, advancement, pay, and so on, among different groups of employees. These comparisons can be useful, but they are only a first step. Equally important but very different questions are: Under what conditions do work units that are diverse with respect to gender or race outperform or underperform work units that are more homogeneous? What conditions mitigate or exacerbate diversity’s potential negative or positive effects.

Conclusion and Scope for Future Research

Diversity in workplace is bringing heterogeneous workforce into the organization. Diversity brings high value to organization, competitive advantage, and increasing productivity. But all these favorable results are obtained on the cost of employees’ dissatisfaction, grievance, conflict, and complex working condition. Due to changes in the demographics and challenges in the market, organizations cannot resist the diversity. The only thing that manager can do is operate in balanced manner to reduce its consequences and optimize its benefits.

EI is the key weapon in the hand of manager to deal with diversity in significant manner. Individuals, HR team, line managers with good EI skills can keep the organization healthy by contributing substantially. It has been extensively discussed that role of EI and its advantages in diverse work force. Contribution of this article gives insights to future researchers to test the concept empirically. Since the behavioral patterns of workforce changing day by day, it is presumed that in future scholars can concentrate on other aspects of behavioral sciences like psychology, cognition, psychological contract etc. Similarly, researchers can examine the learning and career growth potentials of employees under diverse circumstances.

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