The Impacts of Emotional Intelligence on Job Satisfaction: The Mediation and Moderation Effects of Public Service Motivation
Hsiang-Kai Dong, Chia-Hui Leou
Abstract
For public employees who view public service as a noble calling, having a higher level of public service motivation alone may not be sufficient to accomplish their missions. One critical factor is whether the public employees have the ability to adjust their own emotional status when confronted with irrational complaints or blames. This study aims at finding if an individual’s emotional intelligence has any impacts on his/her job satisfaction. Particularly, we would like to know whether public service motivation has mediation effects or moderation effects on the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction. This study applied the stratified random sampling method based on the current population distribution of the Executive Yuan, and successfully surveyed 731 public employees. Samples are examined to be representative to the population. Results of the statistical analyses show that a person’s emotional intelligence is a critical factor to predict his/her job satisfaction. Also, public service motivation plays both the roles of a mediator and a moderator at the same time. However, we believe that “how much an individual’s emotional intelligence would affect his/her job satisfaction should be conditional to this person’s attitudes toward public service” makes more sense because emotional intelligence and public service motivation do not have an unambiguous causal relationship. How and why emotional intelligence affects a person’s public service motivation is still controversial and debatable. Improving public servants’ ability to deal with their emotion and motivation before serving the public may have positive impacts on their jobs as well as their own career. Accordingly, we suggest that the public sector design training courses to improve public employees’ communication skills, mental strength, and pressure adjustment abilities. The currently implemented counseling service, the employee assistance programs, should be further enhanced to help public employees, thereby maximizing the positive influence of human skills.
Keywords: emotional intelligence, public service motivation, job satisfaction