Workforce agility and its links to emotional intelligence and workforce performance: A study of small entrepreneurial firms in India

Abstract

Small businesses play a crucial role in the economy; however, small entrepreneurial firms often lack expertise and resources, meaning that it is challenging to run such businesses successfully. Using data from a survey of six small entrepreneurial firms in India, this research sets out to explore the relationship between workforce performance and emotional intelligence, looking in particular at the role that workforce agility plays. Workplace performance is split into three categories; task performance, adaptive performance, and contextual performance. Our results show that workforce agility acts as a mediator between emotional intelligence and work performance, but only in relation to adaptive and contextual performance; it does not have any significant influence on task performance. Against the backdrop of a volatile and uncertain business environment, we conclude by drawing a number of inferences from our work that small entrepreneurial firms could use to improve employee productivity and performance.