Emotional Intelligence

THE CONCEPT OF EMOTIONS

The word emotion is derived from the French word 'emouvoir' and has its root in the Latin word "emovere" which means either to move or displace. (Villamira, 2001) defined emotion as "A complex integration of interactions between our subjective experience and objective reality, mediated by neural and hormonal systems." Ashforth and Humphrey (1995) have defined emotionality as "A subjective feeling state". This definition encompasses all the basic emotions such as love, joy, shame, guilt, envy is intended to encompass the basic emotions and also various constructs like sentiments, moods and affect. Some theorists consider feelings to be private sensations that transform into emotions when displayed in any social situation (Rosenberg, 1990). However, not everyone distinguishes between feelings and emotions which has resulted in these two terms being used to portray the same meaning in literature (Fineman, 1993). Ashkanasy et al. (2000, p. 11) stated that the components of emotions are the myriad expressions of emotions such as feeling state, display and cognitive processes. Barsade (2002) described emotions as a syndrome that includes a pattern of co-recurring responses which can be classified into three categories under affective experiences namely: Dispositional effect, emotion and mood. Emotions are referred to as intentional mental states (Hurley, 2007). A vast amount of research has been done upon how moods and emotions play a pivotal role in cognitive abilities and behaviour. Moods are generally low intensity feelings which do not interrupt ongoing activities (Forgas, 1992). Emotions on the other hand are high intensity feelings that are triggered because of stimuli, demand attention, and interrupt cognitive processes and behaviour (Forgas, 1992; Morris, 1989; Simon 1982).

2.2 EMOTIONS IN ORGANIZATIONS

As per Sashkin (1981), he contended that in the West, the organizational culture is largely influenced by theorists such as Weber, Taylor and Fayol. According to these theorists, an ideal organization must disregard emotional considerations and solely base it culture and functioning on rational and cognitive frameworks. The Greek classic philosophy and the Western World have classified the concept of emotion has as an extreme opposite of rationality having no significance to logic or any scientific method. However, these theories fail to acknowledge that people are not just rational but are also emotional beings. According to The Nichomachean Ethics (Treddenick, 1955, p. 88), Aristotle has explained that a soul has two parts: rational and irrational. He has concluded that emotions exist in the realm of irrationality.

Though, traditionally organization environment has been considered unfriendly towards emotions (Albrow, 1992; Fineman, 1993; Muchinsky, 2000) with emotions being referred to as