Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Project Performance: Task Interdependency as Mediator and Cultural Diversity as Moderator

Abstract

In today’s era, the project performance indicators are no longer limited only to the iron triangle that is cost, time, and quality. The performance of the project not only depends upon the team collaboration, customer satisfaction as well as the personal traits of the people who are associated with other metrics. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between emotional intelligence and project performance. The mediating role of task interdependence and the moderating role of cultural diversity among team members has been examined in this study as well. In the field of Software development projects, a huge weightage is given to technical knowledge, whereas, the personality traits have not been included, the previous studies show a great impact of the same in the project success. This study is testifying the Emotional Intelligence (EI) of the Project Manager and Project Team on the project performance. Further, the scope of this research is also successfully establishing the linkage of task interdependency and cultural diversity as moderating and mediating factors among Emotional Intelligence and Project performance by analyzing the data collected from 307 respondents of software-based organizations in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The research includes the various project Managers and team members who are working on an agile software development Project. The data is collected via convenient sampling technique. The results of regression analysis of this study supported the impact of Emotional intelligence on project performance. The results from Preacher and Hayes's model confirm the moderating role of Cultural diversity among Emotional Intelligence and Project Performance. These findings shall help particularly the software industry of Islamabad and Rawalpindi to develop Human Resource strategies that would help the project team.