Emotionally savvy employees fail to enact emotional intelligence when ostracized

Abstract

Emotional intelligence (EI) has been endorsed as a personal asset in navigating social environments. By extoling EI's positive implications for work outcomes, advocators encouraged organizations to integrate EI into selection and training programs. Nevertheless, according to meta-analytical results, the predictive validity of EI for various work outcomes may not be so promising as expected. A possible reason is that high EI individuals may not effectively enact this emotional strength under certain circumstances. However, what influences employee EI-enactment at work remains unclear. Drawing upon whole trait theory, we posit that by workplace ostracism, a salient threat to need for belongingness, may hinder employee EI-enactment and in turn constrain EI's positive impact on service performance. Data collected with a weekly diary design demonstrated that weekly workplace ostracism weakened the relationship between employees' general level of EI and their weekly EI-enactment and reduced the indirect effect of EI on weekly service performance via EI-enactment. By showing that workplace ostracism stretches EI to its limit, we make the first attempt to uncover a boundary condition for employee EI-enactment and offers a valuable insight into when EI fails to make a difference.