RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENT AND JOB SATISFACTION AMONG TEXAS INSTRUMENT WORKERS

Transcription

1 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENT AND JOB SATISFACTION AMONG TEXAS INSTRUMENT WORKERS Askiah, J; Arun, G; Zuroni, M.D Department of Resource Management and Consumer Studies, Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia. Abstract The paper explores the relationship between emotional intelligent and job satisfaction among Texas Instrument workers. The emphasis will be on the distribution of respondent in terms of items in emotional intelligent and items in job satisfaction. This involves the explanation about the socioeconomic status of the respondents, the three types of emotional intelligent and job satisfaction. We also discuss the definition and the important of emotional intelligent and job satisfaction in organization. The research location is one of the establish factory in Klang Valley that is Texas Instrument. The result is explained based on the research objectives. The Pearson correlation analysis shows that there are significant relationship between emotional intelligent and job satisfaction among Texas Instrument workers. This paper contribute the information emotional intelligent and job satisfaction for the academicians, organization, and policy makers. Introduction Job satisfaction is one of the ways used by the organization to determine the level of communication and production in the company (Dong Qingwen & Howard, 2006). Job satisfaction is very important because it affects the level of production of the company. It has also become one of the objectives that need to be focus to increase profitability of a company. Job satisfaction can be defined as a combination of feelings that each individual hold towards their job (Robbins, 2005). Job satisfactions are also a component of psychological processes which determine how they feel at work place. Job satisfaction most likely combination of pleasurable emotions based on employees appraisal, affective reaction of job and attitude towards job (Kumari & Pandey, 2011). Unfortunately the performance length has not been completely understood by most. Furthermore, the incremental effects towards job satisfaction are the lengthy working hours which can influence towards are harmful to fatigue level of employees or decrease the level of job satisfaction. The output that was had been able to be produced more would be on the eight hour shifts schedules (Smith et al. 1997). Most of the researcher have done the research about time and job satisfaction. There are lack of information about the emotional intelligent and job satisfaction. Research related emotional intelligence (EI) is widely studied especially in western country. However, in Malaysia the research about emotional intelligent in organization is not widely explore. Based on previous research, people commonly thought that intelligence quotient (IQ) but currently emotional inteligent becomes important aspect in work organization. O Neil (1996) had found out that only 20 percent was contributed by IQ whereby the rest 80 percent is emotional intelligence in determinant life accomplishment. He also mentioned 1

2 that an ordinary life person needs both IQ and EI but to be a successful person needs two times EI than EQ. This is due to IQ is basically referred as dealing with knowledge which based on thinking process that needed for excellence while EI involved the skill to recognize and manage individual emotions. EI is the ability of human to recognize their own feeling and people surrounded by them, motivating their selves and managing their emotions and relationships (Goleman, 1998). Negative emotional intelligence always related to family stresses that the employees might face problem in their relationship with fellow workers, children, sometimes have police cases, courts cases and problem in loan payment (Ioannis Nikolaou, 2007). Nevertheless, complication at home experience would be resulting in high costs of turnover, increase in absenteeism and also lost investments in the human resource which might affect the organizations. Job satisfaction is links with their feelings towards their work and workplace. It shows that the emotions plays important role in determined their satisfaction. Their ability in regulating their emotions can help them to have better perception in work system and create satisfaction towards their work. Based on Mayer (2003) EI is important for the employees who are working in the industry of transportation, health care, hospitality and communication sectors compared with manufacturing, mining, and service sectors. The superiority of emotional intelligence could be said as more common in preparing the working environment for the young workers. Unfortunately, it is understandable that reduction accordingly towards the age of workers which would be more than 20 when going through the youngest life decades to nearly 10 after 55 years of age (Mayer,2003). That was the reason which brought towards this research and also that the consideration that had to be looked into such as the emotional intelligence which may have pound on job satisfaction among employees working there. It is because the number of emotional problem which could be bring towards the disruption of psychological functions. It can be said those problem would tend to reduce in terms of quality and also quantity. According to Sy, Tram and O'Hara (2006), they had examined the relationships among employees emotional intelligence with employees job satisfaction for one hundred eighty seven food service employees from nine different locations of the same restaurant branches. The researchers found that the employee s emotional intelligence was positively associated with job satisfaction. 2

3 Therefore, this paper contributes the issue of emotional intelligence and job satisfaction among employees. The purpose of this study is to project the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction among Texas Instrument workers. Literature Review Emotional Intelligence This section reviews on previous studies about emotional intelligence and its effects towards employees. Emotional intelligence plays an important role among employees. Emotional intelligence influences employee s behaviors towards jobs including specialty, communication, team work, quality of production and customer loyalty (Zeidner et, 2004). Nowadays, many workers are suffering from many problems due to the emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence affects the employees and also production. According to my understanding, emotional intelligence is a way for individuals to control their emotions by the state or condition. Besides that, it also makes a person to interact with each other despite the emotional stress during the conversation. According to Zeidner, Matthews and Roberts (2004) summarized emotional intelligence as a competencies and general dispositions for adaptive personal functioning and coping with environmental demands. They claimed that people of higher emotional intelligence succeed at communicating their goals and ideas. They suggested that emotional intelligence is very important because it create close relationship among employees and team work. Together, these abilities contribute to a satisfying personal and professional life. Abi Ealias and Jijo George (2012), emotional intelligence describes the capacity of a person to identify, consider others emotions and controls own emotions as well. Its principles help in evaluating employee behaviour, management styles, attitudes, interpersonal skills and potentials and is considered to have great relevance in areas like job profiling, planning, recruitment and selection. Another major advantage of emotional intelligence is that it allows people to better understand and mange emotions. It also helps in understanding one s own conduct as well as relationship with others. Psychological studies show the understanding and controlling emotions play significant role in gratifying one s life and work environment. 3

4 Based on Jordan and Ashkanasy (2009), emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage feelings, both one s own and other people is one of the key issues when talking about improving people and business performance and job satisfaction. They also had mentioned that emotional intelligence includes four components which are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social skills. Goleman (1998), there are two components of emotional intelligence which are personal competence and social competence. Personal competence consists of self-awareness and self management while social competence consists of social awareness and relationship management. Self-awareness knows their internal states, preferences, resources and relationship management. It has three subsection namely emotional-awareness, recognize their own feelings and self confidence. Basically they have strong sense of self-worth and belief their capabilities. The next component of personal competence is self-management where illustrate how people regulate their resources, preference and impulses. It also has subsection which is self-control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness and adaptability. Social awareness is the ability to understand about others feelings like being empathy and concern about organizational situation and anticipating in service orientation. The relationship management is related to capabilities of people to practice personal and social competence. It involved ability to influence, communicate, conflict management and cooperate with others. Employees that have high level of emotional intelligence have many advantages towards their self. They enable to identify feeling frustration and stress, consequently regulate those emotions to reduce stress. This is due to they are more resilient because they able to understand the stressors and know how to cope with the stress (Sy et al., 2006). In addition, they are likely to experience high level of job satisfaction when they able to appraise and manage their emotions. They can use this skill to encourage positive interaction that help boost their own morale as well as community in organization and lead to higher job satisfaction ( Shimazu, Shimazu & Odahara, 2004). Job Satisfaction This section reviews on previous studies about job satisfaction and its effects towards employees. Basically, job satisfaction leads employee s attitudes towards job and organization. Job satisfaction is highly associated with quality of life. This is because the life of individual spent on working is the most priority forever since birth to death. For almost 50 years, most of the managers and psychologist choose the same assumption that satisfaction 4

5 directly implicated in organizational success. Berry (1997) said that job satisfaction is an attitude that includes elements of cognitive work, affective and behaviour that is expected to influence the behaviour of work. Job satisfaction influences the job attitudes of individual. Moreover, Karamallah Daneshfard (2011), job satisfaction is the most effective way to identify employee s orientation towards their work. Weiss (2002) had summarizes the concept of job satisfaction as an individual s overall job satisfaction is the overall feeling one gets from satisfaction with different perspective of the job. He had also mentioned that job satisfaction is a combination of cognitive and affective contentment of an employee. Affective satisfaction and job satisfaction gives a positive impact towards the overall satisfaction. Without job satisfaction, may make negative impact on the working. His statement gives picture on the overall positive emotional assessment of the employee s job. The main focus of the study was to identify the relationship of individual personal feeling towards their working. He got to know that, mood of individual when working influence their work. If they have good mood and positive feeling, may due to better productivity which may increase their job satisfaction. In contrast, cognitive satisfaction is the fulfilment an employee gets from a more logical and rational appraisal such as the job conditions, opportunities or outcomes. Hence, it describes the job and not the feelings. Methodology Generally, current studies employ quantitative research approach in order to ascertain and be able to describe the characteristics of the variables. Descriptive design is undertaken in organizations in order to understand the characteristics of group of employees. There were 150 respondents participate in this study. The data gathered were analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). As to discover relationships and interaction emotional intelligence and job satisfaction, correlation research design and descriptive design was applied for this study. The questionnaire is the instrument for data collection. Questionnaires were distributed to employees by using random sampling. Researcher used random sampling because it creates way of ensuring control over confounding variables. Besides that, random sampling provides unbiased way to choose the respondent from large group of employees. Researcher has been using this method by dividing each department based on the level of employment. Emotional Intelligence Measurement 5

6 Emotional Intelligence in organizations was measured using questionnaire that developed by Schutte et al. (1998).The questionnaire consists 33 items and have 3 categories which are assess the appraisal and expression of emotions, regulation of emotions and utilization of emotions. Respondent were asked to rate each item as a 5- point Likert scale, from 1 to 5, which is 1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3= neutral, 4= agree and 5=strongly agree. A high score leads to high emotional intelligence. Higher score point will be 165 and lowest score will be 33. Job Satisfaction Measurement Job Satisfaction was measured using a questionnaire that been created by Weiss et al. (1997) Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ). Job satisfaction is derived from intrinsic job satisfaction, external job satisfaction and general satisfaction. The questionnaire consists of 20 items which measured on a scale ranging from 1 = not satisfied, 2= somewhat satisfied, 3= satisfied, 4= very satisfied and 5= extremely satisfied measured with a 5-point Likert scale. A higher level of job satisfaction is indicated by a higher mean score. Higher score will be 100 and 20 is the lowest score. Reliability Analysis Reliability analysis was done to test the appropriateness of questionnaire used in this study. In this study, reliability test employed Cronbach Alpha test as it is the most frequently used reliability test tool by social researchers. The Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient for emotional intelligence which consists of 33 items is The Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient for job satisfaction which consists of 20 items is This explain the emotional intelligent and job satisfaction are highly acceptable. According to Hair, Babin, Money and Samouel (2003), the reliability analysis scale can be accepted if the Cronbach Alpha coefficient is between 0.6 and 1.0, where on the scale reliability score range 0.8 to < 0. 9 is very good and reliability score 0.9 is excellent. Results and Discussion Socioeconomics Status of the respondents 6

7 Respondent s age between 28 to 37 years old with 30.67, followed by age group 38 to 47 years old with 29. Whereas, the range age 48 to 58 years old was only and represented the older group is the minority group age. In average the age of the respondent in this study is 35 years old. There were 55.3 of the respondent is female and 44.7 is male. Half of the respondent participate in this research is Malay, followed by Chinese, Indian and others. There are 67.3 of the respondent is married, single (19.3 ) and the rest of the respondent is divorced (13.3 ). There were 36.7 of the respondents have SPM (the certificate for completed the secondary school). Next, is the respondent who has Diploma (30.0 ), followed by Degree (17.3 ). It can concluded that half of the respondent has tertiary education level and another half of them have secondary and low level of the education. The statistics shows that most of the respondents have the monthly income which ranges from MYR1500 to MYR2499 which is about It is followed by those who have the monthly income which ranges from MYR 2500 to MYR 3499 which is The rest of the respondents have the monthly income more than MYR The statistics shows that 60 of the respondent were from the Production level and 34 of the respondent are Officer level. There were 72 of the respondent has working experiences less than 10 years. Table 1: Socioeconomic Status of the Respondent Frequency Percent Age More than Race Malay Chinese Indian Others Marital Status Single Married Divorced Level of Education SPM STPM Diploma

8 Degree Master Monthly Income MYR MYR More than MYR Job Position Officer Production Operator Security 3 2 Trainer Working Experiences More than Emotional intelligence (EI) The study shows the distribution of the emotional intelligence items. Item 1 until 13 implied about how well they appraise emotion and express their emotion. The highest mean is item 7 (4.77), which concludes that majority agrees that when their mood changes, they see new possibilities. The second highest item is item 3 (4.64), means most of them agreed they believe they will do well on most of thing they try. Then, item 8 (4.44) denotes that emotions are some of the things that make their life worth living. Meanwhile, the lowest mean is item 5 (4.00) indicates that many of them disagreed that they hard to understand the non-verbal message of other people. It shows that they believe they easily understand non-verbal message. Item 14 to 23 disclosed about how well they regulate their emotions. The highest mean is item 15 (4.43) which indicates majority of them agreed that they are aware of the nonverbal messages that send to others. Next, item 23 (4.20) denotes they agreed to motivate themselves by imagining a good outcome they take on. Meanwhile, the lowest mean is item 20 (4.20) indicates that many of them felt neutral saying that no matter they in positive mood or else, they able to come up with new ideas. Item 24 to 33 are disclosed about how well they utilize emotions. The highest mean is item 29 (4.33) which indicates majority of them know what other people feeling just by looking at them. Next is item 33 (4.30) denotes they agreed by the difficulties for them to understand why people feel the way they do. However, the lowest mean is item 28 (2.75) indicates many of them disagreed when they faced challenges, they give up 8

9 because they believe they will fail. This item shows negative impact towards emotional intelligence. The reason is those with higher emotional intelligence will not easily give up and don t believe they will fail if they faced with challenges. Table 2: Emotional Intelligences Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Mean 1. I know when to speak about my personal problems to others. 2. When I am faced with obstacles, I remember times I faced similar obstacles and overcame them I expect that I will do well on most things I try Other people find it easy to confide in me I find it hard to understand the nonverbal messages of other people. 6. Some of the major events of my life have led me to re-evaluate what is important and not important. 7. When my mood changes, I see new possibilities Emotions are some of the things that make my life worth living. 9. I am aware of my emotions as I experience them I expect good things to happen I like to share my emotions with others When I experience a positive emotion, I know how to make it last. 13. I arrange events others enjoy I seek out activities that make me happy I am aware of the nonverbal messages I send to others I present myself in a way that makes a good impression on others. 17. When I am in a positive mood, solving problems is easy for me. 18. By looking at their facial expressions, I recognize the emotions people are experiencing. 19. I know why my emotions change When I am in a positive mood, I am able to come up with new ideas I have control over my emotions I easily recognize my emotions as I experience them I motivate myself by imagining a good outcome to tasks I take on. 24. I compliment others when they have done something well. 25. I am aware of the nonverbal messages other people send. 26. When another person tells me about an important event in his or her life, I almost feel as though I have experienced this event myself. 27. When I feel a change in emotions, I tend to come up with new ideas. 28. When I am faced with a challenge, I give up because

10 I believe I will fail. 29. I know what other people are feeling just by looking at them. 30. I help other people feel better when they are down I use good moods to help myself keep trying in the face of obstacles. 32. I can tell how people are feeling by listening to the tone of their voice. 33. It is difficult for me to understand why people feel the way they do Job satisfaction The study shows the distribution of job satisfaction among respondent in Texas Instrument, Malaysia. Item 1 4, 7 11, 15 16, and 20 disclosed about their intrinsic job satisfaction. The highest mean is item 1 and 2 (4.43) which indicates majority of them satisfy by being able to keep busy all the time and they had the chance to work alone on the job which brings them more satisfaction towards their job. Next, item 9 (4.36) where most of them satisfy when they had chance to do things for other people. This item gives highest impact towards the job satisfaction among the employees in Texas Instrument, Malaysia. Meanwhile, the lowest mean is item 20 (4.15) indicates the employees has lower satisfaction when they fail get accomplishment item 15 (4.18) which they are not satisfy because they are not given the freedom to use their own judgment. Items 5 6, 12 14, and 19 disclosed about their extrinsic job satisfaction. The highest mean is item 19 (4.37) which indicates the satisfaction from praise that they get for doing a good job. The next highest item is item 12(4.31) where most of them satisfy about the way their job provides for steady employment. Meanwhile, item 6, 13 and 14 have the lowest means. The lowest item is item 13 and 14(4.15) indicates many of them satisfied the pay given out and the amount of work they do and also the chances for advancement on their job. Then is item 6 (4.19) where they are satisfy with the competence of their supervisor in making decision. Item 17 and 18 disclosed about their general job satisfaction. Item 18 (4.19) compared to item 17(3.97). Item 18 represents majority of them are satisfy about the way their co-workers get along with each others. Meanwhile, item 17 represents many of them are satisfied about the working condition and environment. Table 3: Job Satisfaction Very Dissatisfy Dissatisfy Neutral Satisfy Very Satisfy Mean 1. Being able to keep busy all the time

11 2. The chance to work alone on the job The chance to do different things from time to time The chance to be somebody in the community The way my boss handles his/her workers The competence of my supervisor in making decision. 7. Being able to do things that don t go against my conscience. 8. The way my job provides for steady employment The chance to do things for other people The chance to tell people what to do The chance to do something that makes use of my abilities. 12. The way company policies are put into practice My pay and the amount of work I do The chances for advancement on this job The freedom to use my own judgment The chance to try my own methods of doing the job The working conditions The way my co-workers get along with each other The praise I get for doing a good job The feeling of accomplishment I get from the job Relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction The Pearson Correlation Test was conducted to determine the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Job Satisfaction. Table 4 shows, the result illustrate that there is significance relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Job satisfaction (r: 0.920, p<0.000). The relationship shows that they are positive relationship. This mean when Emotional Intelligence has influence on Job Satisfaction. It is important for the Texas Instrument to encourage the workers to have higher emotional intelligence because it is the element to increase the job satisfaction at work place. Conclusions The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between emotional intelligence in Texas Instruments, Malaysia. As an overall conclusion, having high emotional intelligence helps to overcome the stress because of many stressors like the job task, lack of autonomy and opportunity or even less pay. Emotional intelligence enables to reduce the stress due to less job satisfaction by fostering the positive emotions. When they have positive emotions, it make them to feel happy and know how to solve problem without influence by unstable emotions. Thus, the employees should maintain their emotional intelligence level because of the task of jobs 11

12 might bring unpleasant feeling and affect our mood. By having higher emotional intelligence, they are also capable to manage their emotions and know better about others feelings which will help in build better relationship and interactions. 12

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