Prior research findings showed that competent, satisfied and committed employees performed effectively in several domains [1, 2, 3]. Among other skills, there is an increasing interest to understand the role of emotional competence (EC) as another significant competence in the workplace [4, 5]. Previous research related to the importance of EC by health professionals demonstrates that EC is a crucial competence during emotionally charged situations [6]. Mintz and Stoller´s [7] systematic review documents that health professionals need to be able to regulate their own emotions and those of others. Research studies highlighted the impact of EC on job satisfaction [1, 6, 8, 9, 10] and on organisational commitment [1, 6, 10]. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the moderating effect of EC on the relationship between job satisfaction and organisational commitment.
EC is defined as a multidimensional set of individual abilities and skills to deal with one’s own emotions and emotions of others in emotion-related situations [11]. It implies cognitive processes or skills (e.g. perceiving, expressing), but goes beyond these in terms of empathy and regulation [12]. For several years, there has been a controversial debate concerning the EC construct, as to whether it should be presented solely in terms of ability, or whether it should account for both ability and personality characteristics [13, 14]. In the meantime, the term “emotional competence” is used as a term strongly related to emotional intelligence (EI) [15, 16]. In the present study, we preferred to use the term “emotional competence” due to its multidimensional framework based on the theory of Stamouli [17], which synthesizes the different models of EC and EI [16, 18, 19, 20, 21], excluding components that overlap with personality traits. The construct refers to a four-component-model (see Table 1) used to measure emotional perception, emotional sensitivity, emotional expressivity and emotional management [11]. Understanding the four-component-model of EC Stamouli [11] points to the importance of a rating criterion that has to be fulfilled to describe someone´s behaviour as being emotional competent or not. Based on Saarnis´ [21] suggestion about the relevance of one´s own self-efficacy (behaviour according to one’s own targets and values) as criterion to understand the level of someone’s EC, Stamouli [11] adds that a bilateral rating criterion (subjective and situational context) is necessary. The subjective context may clarify the motives of certain behaviour, but the situational context has also to be considered as meaningful as a rating criterion to describe a behaviour or action as competent. Understanding EC means taking into account that its impact can vary depending on the organisational and work situations.
Table 1
Dimensions of emotional competence by Stamouli (2009)
The Emotional Competence Questionnaire | include following skills… | Number of items |
1. Perception of own emotions | 11 |
Attention to one’s own emotions (AE) | to perceive own emotions. | 4 |
Clarity of emotional perception (CP) | to understand own emotions and the own mood. | 7 |
2. Perception of the emotions of others | 4 |
Perspective taking (PER) | to take over the perspective of someone else and to consider various points of view. | 4 |
3. Expressivity of emotions | 16 |
Trust in one’s own expressivity (TE) | to trust the own expressivity and the level of wellbeing is in the center of attention. | 4 |
Positive expressivity (PE) | to feel and express respective emotions of happiness and joy. | 6 |
Negative expressivity (NE) | to express and communicate negatively felt emotions. | 6 |
4. Emotional management | 10 |
Reflective handling of emotions (RE) | the reflexive reprocessing of emotional incriminating situations. | 7 |
Referring to the job characteristics theory of work attitudes and performance [22], organisational commitment and job satisfaction are determined as important work outcomes. Organisational commitment is defined as “the totality of internalized normative pressures to act in a way that meets organisational interests” [23, p. 418]. Based on the three-component model of organisational commitment by Meyer and Allen [24], there is a distinction between affective, continuance and normative commitment. Referring to the purpose of our study, we concentrate explicitly on the component of affective commitment that describes an “emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organisation” [24, p. 67]. Previous research on the field of organisational commitment has focused mainly on outcomes of relevance for employers. In contrast, a growing body of research exists examining the links between organisational commitment and relevant outcomes for employees, including stress and work-family conflict, job satisfaction and work performance [25, 26, 27]. Considering the role of emotions in work situations (e.g. stress, anger) and their effects on employees, we expect that additional individual factors, such as EC, moderate the relationships between organisational commitment and relevant work outcomes for employees.
Job satisfaction has been broadly recognised in both academia and job world. The relationship between job satisfaction as work outcome for employees and organisational commitment has been repeatedly examined in recent research [28, 29, 30, 31, 32]. Nevertheless, there are only a few studies that examine additional individual factors (e.g. EC) that have an effect on the two concepts [6, 10, 33]. For better understanding and assessing the construct of job satisfaction, Weiss [34] proposes three approaches to examine job satisfaction as a result of evaluative judgments about jobs, affective experiences at work, and beliefs about jobs. We focus on the approach relating to employees’ job satisfaction as an affective reaction to the job. This type of reaction refers to the extent a person likes her/his job. It may be considered as the “emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job as achieving or facilitating the achievement of one’s job values” [35, p. 1342] and these values are compatible with one´s needs. Bowling et al. [36] posited the importance of job satisfaction as a broad construct which is associated with a complex set of interrelationships of tasks, roles, responsibilities, interactions, incentives, and rewards.