The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Entrepreneurship: Mediating Role of Job Engagement

Today, organizational entrepreneurship is rapidly becoming a competitive advantage for organizations.  The aim of present study was to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and organizational entrepreneurship with the mediating role of job engagement.

The statistical population of the study consisted of 1100 employees of the Iranian Offshore Oil Company (IOOC). The research sample comprised 285 employees selected through a stratified random sampling method. The research instruments included Work Motivation (Selanova & Shofili, 2002), Organizational Entrepreneurship (Margaret Hill, 2003), and Emotional Intelligence (Fellor & Minors, 2003) questionnaires. Convergent and divergent validity coefficients were used to evaluate the validity of the questionnaires. The reliability of the questionnaires was calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. PLS software and structural equation modeling were used for data analysis.

The results confirmed the positive relationships of emotional intelligence with organizational entrepreneurship and job engagement, and the relationship between organizational entrepreneurship and job engagement. The results also showed that the indirect effect of organizational entrepreneurship on emotional intelligence through work engagement is greater than its direct effect, so it can be concluded that there is a relationship between organizational entrepreneurship and emotional intelligence under the influence of work engagement in employees.

According to the research results, managers should provide the necessary conditions for organizational entrepreneurship with more and more attention to the job engagement of the employees.