Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Job Performance with Mediating Roles of Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment: Evidence from Higher Education Sector of Pakistan

Abstract

The declining job performance of employees in general and university teachers in particular continues to remain a source of serious concern for organizations/ universities in the context of Pakistan. The literature review indicates that an employee’s emotional intelligence, job satisfaction and organizational commitment are related with his/her job performance. However, the integrative impact of an employee’s emotional intelligence, job satisfaction and organizational commitment upon an employee’s job performance was found to be an under-researched area. Hence, the present study was aimed to fill this important research gap. A positivist research philosophy and deductive approach were used to validate the relationships among these important job attitude variables. The study sample included 370 university teachers from 20 prominent public and private universities located in the province of Punjab & Islamabad (Pakistan). The data was analyzed through SPSS & AMOS using appropriate statistical tools including structural equation modeling, multiple regression analysis and Haye’s PROCESS macro to test the mediation models and the hypothesized relationships among the variables. The results have confirmed significant positive impact of emotional intelligence on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance of the university teachers. The results have also shown partial mediation effect of job satisfaction and organizational commitment both individually as well as serially between the emotional intelligence and job performance of the university teachers. Additionally, it was found that the demographic factors did not have any significant impact on the job performance of teachers. Whereas emotional intelligence, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job performance of the private universities was found to be higher than public universities. The present study contributes theoretically towards reinforcing the knowledge about the proper use of these major job attitude variables in the domain of ‘Organizational Behavior’. The research findings also provide an insight into the need for developing these key job attitudes among the employees in general and university teachers in particular to enhance their job performance level. The study results and the recommendations have important implications for academic institutions/organizations, policy-makers, practitioners, and future researchers in order to enhance the job performance of university teachers in particular and employees in general.