The Relationship among Emotional Intelligence, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment in the Banking Sector in The Gambia

Abstract

Despite the large number of studies that examined the antecedents of organizational commitment, fairly little is known about its relationship with emotional intelligence and job satisfaction in developing countries. Hence, the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction on organizational commitment of employees among six banks in The Gambia. A Quantitative research design was used and thus, a convenience sampling of 200 employees were drawn from the six banks selected for this study. Three scales: Emotional Intelligence from Wong and Law (2002); Spector’s (1985) Job Satisfaction and the Organizational Commitment from Meyer, Allen and Smith (1997) were employed to collect data from the participants. The data analyses involve the use of One-Way ANOVA, Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Simple Linear Regression. The findings from the One-Way ANOVA analysis indicates that among the five demographic variables chosen for this study, only level of education had a significant difference on organizational commitment. Furthermore, the findings from the correlation and regression analysis show that emotional intelligence and job satisfaction is positive and has a significant effect on organizational commitment. Similarly, emotional intelligence was also positively and significantly related to job satisfaction. Based on the outcome of the study, it is recommended that managers and human resource practitioners to consider incorporating emotional intelligence assessment into the educator hiring process as well as determine the job satisfaction levels of employees as a basis for forming training budgets and retention strategies. It is hoped that these programmes will enhance and retain valuable employees especially in The Gambia banking industry.Despite the large number of studies that examined the antecedents of organizational commitment, fairly little is known about its relationship with emotional intelligence and job satisfaction in developing countries. Hence, the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction on organizational commitment of employees among six banks in The Gambia. A Quantitative research design was used and thus, a convenience sampling of 200 employees were drawn from the six banks selected for this study. Three scales: Emotional Intelligence from Wong and Law (2002); Spector’s (1985) Job Satisfaction and the Organizational Commitment from Meyer, Allen and Smith (1997) were employed to collect data from the participants. The data analyses involve the use of One-Way ANOVA, Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Simple Linear Regression. The findings from the One-Way ANOVA analysis indicates that among the five demographic variables chosen for this study, only level of education had a significant difference on organizational commitment. Furthermore, the findings from the correlation and regression analysis show that emotional intelligence and job satisfaction is positive and has a significant effect on organizational commitment. Similarly, emotional intelligence was also positively and significantly related to job satisfaction. Based on the outcome of the study, it is recommended that managers and human resource practitioners to consider incorporating emotional intelligence assessment into the educator hiring process as well as determine the job satisfaction levels of employees as a basis for forming training budgets and retention strategies. It is hoped that these programmes will enhance and retain valuable employees especially in The Gambia banking industry.