| المستخلص: |
This paper is a theoretical investigation into the effects of cultural differences on emotional intelligence of individuals from Western and Eastern cultures. The emotional intelligence models conceptualized by Mayer and Salovey (1997) and Petrides and Furnham (2001) are used to develop propositions about the dimensions of emotional intelligence that might be affected by individualism-collectivism dimension of the culture. It is proposed that the individuals from individualistic cultures would score higher on emotional intelligence than individuals from collectivistic cultures. Implications for practicing international human resource managers are discussed. Emotional intelligence (EI) - the ability to identify, process, and manage emotions, in both self and others (e.g., Goleman, 2001; Mayer & Salovey, 1997) - has attracted considerable attention among the scientific community, the general public, and the commercial world. Despite the rather large literature concerning EI, the vast majority of studies concerning development and validation of EI models have been done in the Western countries (Karim & Weisz, 2010). Specifically, generalizability of EI theory in different cultures (the practice of transporting the EI models and instruments from West to East) has led to a concomitant increase in the need for researchers to evaluate the quality and, more importantly, the validity of the EI instruments across cultures (Ekermans, 2009; Gangopadhyay & Mandal, 2008; Palmer, Gignac, Ekermans, & Stough, 2008). Individualism- collectivism “has become a catchall default explanation for cultural differences in human behavior” (Kagitcibasi, 1994, p. 53). The construct is widely used when contrasting Western and Eastern cultural frames (e.g., Chan, 1994; Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997; Yamaguchi, 1994). Social scientists assume that individualism is more prevalent in industrialized Western societies than in other societies, especially more traditional Eastern societies (e.g., Gelfand, Bhawuk, Nishii, & Bechtold, 2004, p. 454). The present study seeks to theoretically investigate whether there are any differences on the EI dimensions proposed by Mayer and Salovey (1997) and Petrides and Furnham (2001) between individualists and collectivists. The paper is divided into four major sections. The first section briefly describes the two main approaches to EI as developed in the Western world. The second section briefly describes the nature of cultural dimension of individualism- collectivism. Section three combines the EI and individualism- collectivism dimension of culture to derive theoretical propositions regarding EI differences between collectivists and individualists. Finally, section four provides a discussion and implications for international management.
|
