Emotional intelligence and creative performance: Looking through the lens of environmental uncertainty and cultural intelligence

Abstract

Despite the need to better understand the relationship between employee creativity and emotional intelligence, research remains scant and ambiguous. We examine the effect of emotional intelligence (EI) on frontline employees’ creativity and the mediating role of environmental uncertainty (EU) as an explanatory mechanism to understand the EI and creative performance (CP) relationship. In addition, we test for the interaction effect of EI and CI on frontline employees’ creativity. Using a sample of 283 frontline employees (FEs) from four and five star hotels, structural equation modeling is employed to test the proposed hypotheses. Results reveal that EI has a positive impact on FEs’ creative performance. The findings also confirm the mediating role of EU in the relationship between EI and CP. Moderating regression analyses show that CI strengthens the impact of EI on CP, albeit with a marginal increment in explanatory power. Important theoretical and managerial implications flow from our findings.