The core assets of the modern business enterprise lie not in buildings, machinery, and real estate, but in the intelligence, understanding, skills, and experience of employees. Management development often focuses on knowledge, key skills and abilities that are considered to be essential to effective leadership behaviour or high-performing individuals.
Individual and organisational performance depend on various issues, one of the many qualities involved is emotional intelligence.The question of how some people are more successful in their lives then others has always been intriguing. For many decades scholars have generally focused on Intelligence Quotient (IQ), however, it is not the only answer to success or failure. As early as 1920, E. L.
Thorndike at Columbia University coined the term "social intelligence" to refer to the ability to understand and manage other people which led scholars to work on the emotional side of humans (Dunn, 2008).In 1985, Wayne Payne first mentioned the term emotional intelligence expressing that a person can overcome deficiencies in emotional functioning and regulation by showing strength in the face of fear or desire (Bradberry & Su, 2006). The first publication on emotional intelligence was in 1995 by Daniel Goleman; however, the concept was referred to in prior studies. Mayer and Salovey described emotional intelligence as a unique cognitive ability based upon emotion that is operationalized in an individual’s social environment (Salovey & Mayer, 1990).
Emotional intelligence describes abilities distinct from, but complementary to, academic intelligence or the purely cognitive capacities measured by IQ” (Goleman, 1998). Mayer and Salovey conducted several studies over the years trying to find out why some individuals were reading emotions than others where they proposed a model for emotional intelligence. One major reason for the continuing interest on this topic is that Emotional Intelligence has been prolong compared to Intelligence Quotient.In his book, (Goleman, 1995) describes that IQ contributed up to 20% of life success; the remaining has to be filled in by emotional intelligence. Susan Dunn explains that a person’s emotional intelligence is much more important than their intelligence quotient and further explains that emotional quotient can be learnt and intelligence is a given gift (Dunn, 2008).
On the other hand, critics argue that emotional intelligence is a controversial theory because it lacks in definition and conceptualization.Furthermore, the role of emotional intelligence is exaggerated and the measures suffer from low reliability and validity. Additionally, emotional intelligence measures overlap other measures such as non-cognitive (intelligence) studies and therefore emotional intelligence is not predicting much in life or to what level is the measures and understand emotional intelligence viable and useful or leaders and individuals in any organization (Thingujam, 2004).The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence and organisational and individual success.
In review will discuss some of the research works that has highlighted application of emotional intelligence in the practical world. Additionally, it will discuss and highlight prior research on the issue of emotional intelligence both on an individual and an organisational level. Finally, it will critique on the works of other authors and scholars focusing on some of the impacting factors of emotional intelligence.The review would conclude by providing a complete summary on emotional intelligence by highlighting the important concepts, theories and discussions covered by other literatures discussed in this review. Additionally, some recommendations and lessons that have been learnt from writing the literature review will be mentioned.
Finally, stating few of the ways the literature review was helpful, mostly focusing on the ideal issue which is emotional intelligence and its surrounding concepts.
