The Buffering Effects of Emotional Intelligence on Job Stress and Sales Outcomes

There has been a great deal of academic and managerial interest in Emotional Intelligence(EI) in organizational and professional sales settings. Despite this attention,and the broad claims for the importance of EI on job outcomes, academic researchhas consistently provided disappointing empirical support for the directeffects of EI on job outcomes. This paper develops theory that, in contrast tothe received direct effects view of EI, presents EI as important, but as amoderator. Integrating EI theory and transactional coping theory, this studyframes EI as a buffer that enables salespeople to mitigate the negative effectsof role stress on salesperson burnout, customer orientation (CO), and salesperformance. Using three matched data sources from multiple professional sellingworkgroups in a business-to-business sales setting and hierarchical linearanalysis, the authors find that EI moderates the relationship between rolestressors and job outcomes. Specifically, EI moderates the negative influenceof role ambiguity on burnout, CO and sales performance, and of role conflict onburnout and CO.