Jekaterina Jaroslavceva
Current position:
New Media Account Manager at 77Agency
Thesis title:
To What Extent Distance Matters? The impact of emotional intelligence on effectiveness.
Description:
Commonly defined as ‘the ability to perceive, use, understand and manage emotions” (Mayer and Solovey, 1997), emotional intelligence entered academic publications on management in late 1990s and rapidly became a popular topic in research, with studies exploring its effects on various performance indicators – e.g. job satisfaction or productivity. However, prior studies largely ignored different circumstances and work contexts while exploring the direct relationship between emotional intelligence and dependent variables. Current study emphasizes today’s changing nature of teamwork, triggered by technological progress and introduction of virtual dimension to team collaboration. When the technology became ubiquitous, companies are able to capture more and more benefits that virtual work brings to them – both on the organizational and individual levels, e.g. lower travel expenses and increased work-life balance and satisfaction of employees. However, there are certain challenges that virtual work brings to teams, especially concerning the maintenance of effective social interaction among team members, and establishment of the necessary level of trust, what is crucial for reaching high effectiveness. The present research hypothesises that one’s emotional intelligence helps in overcoming these potential challenges and reaching higher effectiveness under digital working arrangements.
The empirical part of this study was conducted at Microsoft Netherlands as an ideal organization to study virtual teamwork. The company encourages its employees to engage in digital collaboration within their teams and provides them with sufficient ICT infrastructure to do so, offering free choice regarding the degree of their engagement in virtual collaboration. Quantitative research method was employed to test posed hypotheses. The data was collected via the online survey that was sent out to Microsoft Netherlands employees. Respondents were asked questions aimed to assess their emotional intelligence, effectiveness, which entailed individual satisfaction, productivity and perceived team effectiveness, and the degree of virtuality of their teams.
The empirical analysis results showed that individual emotional intelligence is positively and significantly correlated with effectiveness score. However, contrary to expectations, leader’s emotional intelligence was not found to explain individual’s effectiveness beyond individual’s own emotional intelligence score. Virtuality appeared to positively correlate with individual’s effectiveness. The results have valuable implications for both managerial and academic fields.
For the complete pdf version of this thesis click
here
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2009 - Jekaterina Jaroslavceva
