Emotional Intelligence among MBA Students of Delhi (NCR)

42 Emotional Intelligence among MBA Students of Delhi (NCR) Dr. Anu Nagpal Chopra, Associate Professor, IP University, Delhi Jyotsna, Research Scholar, Mewar University ABSTRACT Emotional intelligence has become a major topic of interest in academics and corporate circles these days. This study has been done to find out Emotional Intelligence (EI) of MBA students studying in management colleges located in DELHI (NCR). The objective of the study is to investigate the impact of demographic variables (gender and age) on emotional intelligence of MBA students and also to study the impact of emotional intelligence on academic performance of students. The sample size was 250 MBA students. Assessing emotions scale Which was developed by Nicola S. Schutte, John M. Malouff & Navjot Bhullar (2009) were used as tools for the study. The data were analyzed with the help of product moment coefficients of correlation and chi square test. The findings of the study revealed negative relationship between emotional intelligence and academic performance. The study also revealed that there is a significant impact of demographic variables on emotional intelligence. Keywords: Emotional Intelligence, Emotional Scale, Gender, Age, Academic performance, Students I. INTRODUCTION Without fuel, a car is motionless, without self belief how can an individual be the driven to tertiary educational success? Emotional Intelligence is essential for any student, as they are the leaders in their own life and drive either their success or failure of obtaining a degree. As any student would know, the motivation to success has to lie within themselves as the demands and stress levels are all part of the pursuit of educational success. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is considered as 21st century workplace skill. It is considered as an important factor which can predict academic performance of the students and performance of the employees in work place. Of late, workshops and conferences are being held in work places to help employees and managers to become aware of the components of EI so that they improve their performance. Several research works have confirmed that EI helps to manage the stress, control the emotions and deal with any adverse situation effectively. If EI is considered as vital for success, then it becomes imperative that colleges must pay more attention to teach EI skills to students. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE The concept of EI was first introduced by Salovey and Mayer in the early 1990 s and made popular by Daniel Goleman with publication of his book, Emotional intelligence, Why it can matter more than IQ in 1995. Salovey & Mayer have defined EI as the ability to monitor one s own and others feelings & emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one s thinking and actions. According to Goleman (1995) EI consists of five components: Self- awareness: Ability to recognise one s emotions, personality, strengths and weaknesses, Self- regulation: Ability to control one s emotions, impulses & adaptability, Self- motivation: Ability to gather one s feelings & directing oneself towards a set goal, Empathy: Ability to recognize the feelings of others; sensitivity to others' feelings. Managing relationship (Social Skills): The ability to solve problems without insulting co-workers and to maintain good relations with others. II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE Rao (2012) highlighted in his study the Effect of Demographic Factors on Emotional Intelligence. He did his study among MBA Students. He attempted to study that Emotional Intelligence which had become a major topic of interest in academics and corporate circles. The sample size of 561 MBA students was taken for the concerned study.the result showed that EI covers a range of skills such as motivating others, self-motivation, ability to communicate and listen effectively, building rapport and demonstrating empathy. Dubey (2012) indicated in his study the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and academic motivation among adolescents. Sample for the study included 156 (78 boys and 78 girls) class XI of Allahabad city. The results showed that emotional intelligence was positively related to academic motivation among both boys and girls. It may be due to the reason that as academic motivation of students increases they were better motivated to handle, manage and control their own emotions. Dr Manzoor (2011), in his study, provided an Empirical Evidence of Relationship between Emotional

43 Intelligence (EI) and Academic Achievement (AA) of Undergraduate Students. The data was collected from students of a well-reputed university in Pakistan. The participants of the study were undergraduate students studying in various departments of four main faculties of the university in Rawalpindi. These faculties were Education, Agricultural Sciences, Management Sciences, IT sciences. It was decided to distribute questionnaires to students of these faculties making a sample of 100 students. The Bar On EQ-I consists of five points selfrating response format.117 items of the inventory were distributed into 15 subscales. Result of this study showed that there is a positive and significant relation among Emotional Intelligence and academic achievement of the participants. Marzuki (2012) highlighted in his study the level of Emotional Intelligence and demographic differences among students in public universities. He tried to determine the emotional intelligence level of Malaysian university students from demographic aspects (gender, academic background, place of residence, academic courses and cumulative grade point average (CGPA). The data was collected from a total of 3101 final year students from 10 public universities that were randomly chosen as samples. Results found that a total of 1,593 (51.37%) students have low Emotional Intelligence level while 1,506 (48.56%) have high Emotional Intelligence level. Two students (0.06%) did not answer questions on Emotional Intelligence and other demographic factors showed varying results. Nassir & Masrur (2012), in their study, tried to Explore Emotional Intelligence of the Students of IIUI in Relation to Gender, Age and Academic Achievement. In this study, the predictor variable was Emotional Intelligence and criterion variable was academic achievement as measured by students Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA). The participants of the study were randomly selected 132 students, studying in different departments of IIUI. The results of this study signified the importance of Emotional Intelligence in academic success. The significant correlation was found between Emotional Intelligence and academic achievement (r = 0.34, p<.01). No significant correlation was found in emotional intelligence and gender (r = 0.01, p>.05). Emotional intelligence was neither significantly correlated with age (r = 0.04, p>.05). A significant positive correlation between Emotional Intelligence and academic achievement indicated that academic success did not only depend on cognitive aspects of intelligence rather it was affected by emotional abilities. Shipley & Jackson (2011) highlighted in their study the effects of Emotional Intelligence, age, work experience, and academic performance. A survey was created and administered to 193 College of Business students at a south-eastern university. The sample was composed of 51% male and 48% female students. In order to determine if Emotional Intelligence was positively associated with work experience, they performed a simple linear regression. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the average total Emotional Intelligence scores among students that had full-time work experience and those that did not have full-time work experience. Haron & Mustafa (2010) highlighted the Gender Influences on Emotional Self-Regulation among Malaysian Academicians. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and a total of 24 professors were interviewed over the period of nine months. An online survey was conducted and 595 academicians responded. Result from the survey showed that a total of 90professors and 501 non-professors responded to the questionnaire sent to them. The means showed that female respondents had higher score (M=3.28, SD=2.52) of emotional self-regulation compared to male respondents (M=2.78, SD=2.53). Theoretically, the study contributed towards the understanding on gender influences on emotional self-regulation. DasGupta (2010) indicated Emotional Intelligence emerging as a significant tool for Female Information Technology professionals in managing role conflict and enhancing quality of Work Life and Happiness. In this study, he explored its relationship to some of the important psychosocial variables in order to assess what exactly makes this component so useful indeed. The psychosocial variables included in the study were Quality of Work Life, Work Family Role Conflict and Perceived Happiness of female IT professionals. The sample consisted of 30 female IT professionals of Kolkata. The results were encouraging as Emotional Intelligence had been found to bear significant relationships with all other variables. It was positively correlated with Quality of Work Life and Happiness, indicating that it contributed toward achieving higher Quality of Work Life and greater Perceived Happiness and was negatively correlated with both the domains of Work family Role Conflict, indicating that Emotional Intelligence tunes downed the perception of Role conflict and thereby reduced the stress produced by it. Jdaitawi, Ishak &Taamneh (2011) highlighted in their study the Effectiveness of Emotional Intelligence Training Program on Social and Academic Adjustment among First Year University Students. They tried to identify the difference effect of Emotional Intelligence training program towards Emotional Intelligence. The study was pre-post-test, experimental control groups design with 2x2x3 factorial design. A total of 289 first year university students were randomly selected from two universities in Jordan and a purposive sample was drawn from the population based on willingness to undergo

44 motivational programs. The result showed that there was a significant difference between student s in experimental group on the level of Emotional Intelligence, F (5.306, p=.022,.05). It showed that both of groups were effective to increase student Emotional Intelligence. Rahman &Ferdausy (2012), in this study, Explored the Relationships between Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Styles and Gender. They tried to explore the relationships between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and leadership styles (transformational and transactional) of university students. The study also attempted to determine differences in levels of EI between male and female students. Primary data for this study was collected from 225 full-time MBA students studying at different academic departments under the Faculty of Business Administration in a public university of Bangladesh. The results showed a strong correlation (r = 0.66) between EI and transformational leadership style and a weak correlation (r = 0.27) between EI and transactional leadership style. No significant differences in EI between male and female students were found. III. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY General objective: To study the impact of various dimensions of emotional intelligence (perception of emotions, managing emotions in the self, social skills or managing other s emotions, and utilizing emotions) on the academic performance of students Specific Objective: a). To investigate the impact of demographic variables (gender and age ) on emotional intelligence of MBA students. b). To study the impact of emotional intelligence on academic performance of students. c). To suggest strategies to enhance emotional intelligence of students across MBA colleges. IV. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Two Management colleges of Delhi offering MBA programmes located in Delhi were selected for this study. Convenience sampling technique was used to select the colleges. Sample consisted of 250 MBA students. All the students studying in both II and IV semester MBA present on the day of data collection were selected as sample units. The following demographic variables have been focused in the study: Gender Age Value Df Asymp. Exact Exact Sig. (2-Sig. (2-Sig. (1- sided) sided) sided) Pearson Chi- 21.794 a 1.000 Square Continuity Correction b 20.947 1.000 Likelihood Ratio 21.981 1.000 Fisher's Exact.000.000 Test Linear-by-Linear 21.749 1.000 Association N of Valid Cases 250 V. HYPOTHESIS A hypothesis is a statement of your assumption about the prevalence of a phenomenon or about a relationship between two variables that you plan to test within the frame work of the study. H 01 : There is no significant impact of demographic variables (gender and age) on emotional intelligence of MBA students. H 1 : There is a significant impact of demographic variables (gender and age) on emotional intelligence of MBA students. H 02 : There is no significant impact of emotional intelligence on academic performance of students. H 2 : There is a significant impact of emotional intelligence on academic performance of students. VI. DATA ANALYSIS Chi-square test was conducted to study the impact of variable i.e., gender (male and females) on emotional intelligence of MBA students. Since the significance value is less than 0.050. Hence the null hypothesis gets rejected. According to the result the maximum respondents were male 132 and females 118. 161 respondents were below the age of 22 and 89 were above the age of 22. The maximum respondents were having percentage between 80-90 (109), 100 respondents have percentage between 70-80, 28 had percentage between60-70 and only 7 have above 90 percent marks.111 respondents are in semester II while 139 respondents are in semester IV. After examining the mean scores of the various items, the mean score of item no 10(3.95), item no 24(3.95), item no 17(3.86), item no 30(3.85) which indicated that students expected good things to happen with them and they also

45 compliment others when others done something well, students also believe that when they are in positive mood, solving problems is easy for them and students also help others people when they are down. VII. HYPOTHESIS TESTING H 1: There is no significant impact of demographic variables (gender and age) on Emotional Intelligence of MBA students. IMPACT OF DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES (GENDER) ON EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Chi-square test was conducted to study the impact of variable i.e., gender (male and females) on emotional intelligence of MBA students. Since the significance value is less than 0.050. Hence the null hypothesis gets rejected. Thus it can be said that there is a significant impact of demographic variables on emotional intelligence IMPACT OF DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLE (AGE) ON EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Chi-square test was conducted to study the impact of variable i.e., (AGE) on emotional intelligence of MBA students. Since the significance value is less than 0.050. Hence the null hypothesis gets rejected. Thus it can be said that there is a significant impact of demographic variables on emotional intelligence Value Df Asymp. Exact Exact Sig. (2-Sig. (2-Sig. (1- sided) sided) sided) Pearson Chi- 5.564 a Square 1.018 Continuity Correction b 5.121 1.024 Likelihood Ratio 5.555 1.018 Fisher's Exact Test.021.012 Linear-by- Linear 5.552 1.018 Association N of Valid 250 Cases H 2: There is no significant impact of emotional intelligence on academic performance of students. VIII. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE Correlation was conducted to test the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic performance. The test shows that there is a negative relationship (-0.58) between emotional and academic performance. This means that as academic performance increases the emotional intelligence level decreases or visa- versa. Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) N PERCENTA GE EQ PERCENTAGE 1.000 -.058 EQ -.058 1.000 PERCENTAGE..180 EQ.180. PERCENTAGE 250 250 EQ 250 250 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE Regression analysis was conducted to study the impact of emotional intelligence on academic performance. The value of F change is.841 which is greater than 0.050 therefore, it can be said that there is no significant impact of emotional intelligence on academic performance and null hypothesis is accepted. There is no significant impact of emotional intelligence on academic performance. IX. FINDING AND RESULT OF THE STUDY Emotional Intelligence is considered vital for success in all fields starting from education to employment. EI can affect academic performance positively not only during the years the skills are taught but during the career that follows. EI covers a range of skills such as motivating others, self-motivation, ability to communicate and listen effectively building rapport and demonstrating empathy. Emotional intelligence skills help management students to successfully knock the doors of corporate and progress in their careers. In spite of its importance, Emotional Intelligence still remains a neglected component in the curriculum of educational institutions. The main objective of the research is to study the impact of various dimensions of emotional intelligence (perception of emotions, managing emotions in the self, social skills or managing other s emotions, and utilizing emotions) on the academic performance of students. This study investigated the effect of demographic variables like gender and age of MBA students on the Emotional Quotient (EQ) of the students. It was found that a person s EI was not dependent on any of the demographic factors focused in the study. This means that EI can be developed at any stage in life. The statistical tools used to analyse the data are correlation, regression, chi-test, mean and standard deviation.

46 X. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY During the research and while collecting information there were certain hurdles as listed below:- The present study was limited by only utilizing two MBA institutes of Delhi. Evaluating the components of emotion-related skills is a challenge given the myriad of factors involved in emotional situations in age and gender differences. Quantitative methods were used to gather information. A method where both qualitative and quantitative methods also known as triangulation could have been used to validate with in depth observations and probing. The students were not able to devote much of their time for our research XI. SUGGESTIONS AND SCOPE FOR FURTHER STUDY Each and every project along with its certain objectives also leaves some questions unanswered. This gives the direction for further researches in the area. Scope of the study could give the projected scenario for a new successful strategy with a proper implementation plan. The present study leaves a lot of scope for further research in the area of Emotional Intelligence. The researcher in future can conduct a research in various other colleges as this study is limited to two colleges. The study can also be conducted in various other sectors i.e. hospitality, pharmaceutical industry to analyze the Emotional Intelligence of employees. Model R R 2 Adj. R 2 Std. Error of Change Statistics the Estimate R 2 Change F Change df1 df2 Sig. F Change Durbin- Watson 1.058 a.003 -.001.805.003.841 1 248.360 1.369 XII. RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE STUDY In the previous researches which have been conducted by researchers in previous years as it has been seen there was much emphasis on IQ only and EI was not given importance but now the scenario has changed and the concept of EI has moved from the organization to education institutes also. Although demographic factors (gender, academic performance, and age) show varying results, the overall results signified that emotional intelligence skills of the majority of students are still at the low level. Thus, a few recommendations which can be considered are:- 1. Certain soft skills workshops to enhance emotional intelligence, stress management, anger management and communicational ability should be emphasized. These activities will foster the emotional development of students in order to enable them to understand their own emotion and personality. 2. Although some of these activities have been utilized by the university authorities either through faculties, student s affairs department, clubs or student bodies; it should be done in such a way that it consciously tells the students the importance of emotional intelligence. For example, the understanding of emotional intelligence has to be in line with the understanding of why it is so important in everyday life. Similarly, it should also be stressed in all careers development and counseling activities. 3. Training modules should be introduced where it can be done through a series of direct emotional intelligence training or through other leadership style training. In addition, students need to be told the implications of emotional intelligence in their career planning. Activities such as how to behave professionally in employment interview may expose the students to real life situations. 4. The exposure to other competencies such as administration, motivation and leadership training should be emphasized. 5. Shifting from academic excellence to overall excellence needs a total paradigm shift in university administration.this will guarantee student success both emotionally and professionally. University should look at its social responsibility in enhancing the overall quality of post graduates. XIII. REFERENCES [1] Yelkikalan, N., Hacioglu, G., Kiray, A., Ezilmez, B., Soylemezoglu, E., Cetin, H., et al. Emotional Intelligence Characteristic of Students Studying at Various Faculties and Colleges of Universities. European Scientific Journal, 8 (8), 33-50.

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