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Advances In Management i I Vol. 5 (6) June (2012)
Case Study:
Assessing Work-Life Balance:From Emotional Intelligence and Role Efficacy of Career Women
Jyotbi Sree V.* and Jyotbi P.School of Management Studies, University of Hyderabad, Gachibowli (A.P.), INDIA
AbstractWork-life balance is the term used to describe
p'ractices in achieving a balance between the demandsof employees ' family (life) and work lives. The demandsand pressures of work make difficult to stretch time forbalancing work-life activities. Women taking up work-life balance challenge have an impact on women'sadvancement. Organization also may create work placeculture and climates that reflect concern for employees'lives outside of work. It is important for organizations toperiodically review current work processes andpractices to determine which ones lead to workinefficiencies and employee stress. In this backgroundthe present study was undertaken to determine theIndian Career Women work-life balance. The presentstudy focuses on the relationship between role efficacyand emotional intelligence as related to work- lifebalance of Career women. Sample consists of 63 careerwomen working in Andhra Pradesh, India. The resultsshow that there is a significant impact of factorsaffecting Role efficacy on Emotional Intelligence.
Key words: Work Life Balance, Career Women, EmotionalIntelligence, Role Efficacy, Organizational initiatives.
IntroductionMost professional women step off the career fast
track at some point with children to raise, elderly parents tocare for and other pulls on their time, these women areconfronted with one off-ramp after another. When they feelpushed at the same time by long hours and unsatisfying work,the decision to leave becomes even easier. Many women takean off-ramp at some point on their career highway. Sylvia andCarolyn^' state that nearly four in ten highly qualified women(37 percent) report that they have left work voluntarily atsome point in their careers. Among women who havechildren, that statistic rises to 43 percent. Factors other thanhaving children that pull women away from their jobs includethe demands of caring for elderly parents or other familymembers (reported by 24 percent) and personal health issues(9 percent). Not surprisingly, the pull of elder careresponsibilities is particularly strong for women in the 41 to55 age group-often called the "sandwich" generation,positioned as it is between growing children and agingparents.
One in three women in that bracket has left work forsome period to spend time caring for family members who arenot children. And lurking behind all this is the pervasivenessof a highly traditional division of labor on the home front. Ina 2001 survey conducted by the Center for work-life policy,fully 40 percent of highly qualified women with spouses feltthat their husbands create more work around the house thanthey perform. Alongside these "pull" factors are a series of"push" factors-that is, features of the job or workplace thatmake women head for the door. Seventeen percent of womensay they took an off-ramp, at least in part, because their jobswere not satisfying ot meaningful. Overall, under stimulationand lack of opportunity seem to be larger problems thanoverwork. Only 6 percent of women stopped working becausethe work itself was too demanding. In business sector, thesurvey results suggest that push factors are particularlypowerful-indeed, in these sectors, unlike, say, in medicine orteaching, they outweigh pull factors. Of course, in the hurly-burly world of everyday life, most women are dealing with acombination of push and pull factors-and one often serves tointensify the other. When women feel hemmed in by rigidpolicies or a glass ceiling, for example, they are much morelikely to respond to the pull of family.
Work-Life BalanceWork-life balance is the term used to describe those
practices at workplace that acknowledge and aim to supportthe needs of employees in achieving a balance between thedemands of their family (life) and work lives. The workFoundation, earlier known as the Industrial Society, believesthat 'Work-life balance is about people having a measure ofcontrol over when, where and how they work. It is achievedwhen an individual's right to a fulfilled life inside and outsidepaid work is accepted and respected as the norm, to themutual benefit of the individual, business and society'.
The concept of work-family (life) balance hasemerged from the acknowledgement that an individual'swork-life and personal/family life may exert confiictingdemands on each other. Confiict is a normal part of life and isa natural result of the conflicting demands arising frommultiple roles such as that of a mother, daughter, daughter-in-law, wife, friend and employee. In order to manage thenegative spillover of conflict, it is important to balance thedemands fi-om both the domains. Work-life balance is aboutadjusting work patterns to achieve overall fulfillment. A goodwork-life balance enables the business to thrive and at the
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Advances In Management i 1 VoL 5 (6) June (2012)
satne time enables the employees to easily comhine workwith other aspirations and responsibilities.
Work-life balance should not be understood assuggesting an equal balance or scheduling equal number ofhours for each one's work and personal activities. A positivework-life balance involves achievement and enjoyment. Agood working definition of work-life balance may bemeaningful daily achievement and enjoyment in each of thefour quadrants of life-work, family, friends and self. The bestwork-life balance varies for an individual over time atdifferent stages of career and age; different factors becomeimportant for an individual.
Work-life issuesIn most organizations, employees rarely feel
comfortable discussing their personal priorities. They worrythat admitting a passion for singing with the local operacompany, for instance, will be seen as a lack of passion forwork. Such fear is not misguided. Most managers believe-orat least hope-that work is at the top of an employee's list oflife priorities. Work life issues or concerns refer to thoseaspects of an employee's work or family life that may have aninfluence on one another. Initial interest in work-life issueswas the result of two developments that occurred during the1970s. These developments included an increase in number ofwomen entering the workforce and the growth of dual-careerfamilies where both the spouses were working. This trendresulted in organization being urged to acknowledgeemployees' family and other personal commitments.
Work life issues/concerns encompass all non-workrelated demands and hence are not restricted to only familydemands. Equations both at the workplace and at home havechanged in the net worked era. While in the machine age,work and life were seen as two independent domains, in thenetworked age there is a complete overlap between the twodomains. These shifts are summarized in the table A. Womenface conflicts between work and family demands as well asdemands from family have increased over the years. This hasmade it difficult for organizations to ignore the significanceof employees' non-work demands on their performance,commitment and job satisfaction.
Work-life balance consequencesIt is not enough for organizations to implement
family-friendly practices such as flextime and extendedparental leave, to reduce employees' work-life conflicts. It ismore important to have a supportive culture that encouragesemployee utilization of work-life benefits. The extent towhich individual managers are sensitive to andaccommodating of employees' family needs, is the managers'responsibility to ensure that employees complete their leaveentitlements of optional holidays for the years.
A firm may extend the benefit of opting for leave
beyond the stipulated number of days, depending on need.Employee may find that taking more leave resulted in lowerincrements or fewer subsequent promotions. Someorganizations offer formal programmes to women employeesthat permit them to work reduced hours or extend leavebecause of child care demands. However these womenemployees are likely to still lose out on promotions due to thelong hour's culture that undervalues employees who usework-life programmes to make more time for their families.Some times period of unpaid leave will not count towardshis/her service tentire resulting in adverse effect on chancesfor promotions.
In the contemporary environment, woman workforcehas been challenged with work - life conflict, turnoverintentions, stress, absenteeism and organizational commit-ment. In this endeavor, women experience pressures in anumber of contexts: cultural, domestic, work and profession-nal. Despite women professionals having the requisite quali-fication and experience, they are continually undermined,tensed between personal role and work role.
Organizational focys on Work-Life BalanceIssues
Organizations mainly revolved around jobcharacteristics, job enrichment and social informationprocessing. Today organizations need to be more flexible sothat they are equipped with the members of organization theirwork force and enjoy their commitment. Thereforeorganizations are required to adopt a strategy to improve theemployees' quality of work life and personal life. EvenQuality of Work Life has concerns about: employeecommitment and skills during a period. Organizations andrapid technologies change recognizing the achievement ofmissions and goals require high performing employees toaddress work issues, balancing personal and professional life.The concern for quality of work life and personal life takesmore with overall climate of work - life domains. Analysis ofQWL described it as: A concern about the impact of work onpeople as well as on organizational effectiveness and the ideaof participation in problems solving and decision making atwork place and home place.
According to Agarwala^*, research evidenceindicates that when employees have such a participatory,problem-solving approach to work-life, they are morecommitted to their work place (organization) and home andattaining balancing between both the work and the life.
The quality of work/life that an organizationprovides is often determining factor in many individuals'choices of employer. Human resources policies designed tohelp employees balance their work and family lives can alsoaffect turnover, performance, absenteeism, organizationalcommitment and employee willingness to go the extra mileon behalf of their employers.
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Advances In Management i Vol. 5 (6) June (2012)
Work-Family ConflictThe demands and pressures of work and family may
give rise to work-family conflict in an individual. Anemployee may be faced with work-family conflict, whenhe/she has to attend the parent-teacher meeting in the child'sschool or when he/she has a doctor's appointment for anageing parent. The demands and pressures of work make itdifficult for the employee to stretch time for such activities.
Types of work-family conflictThree major types of work/family conflicts have
been identified in work family literature.
Time-based conflicts: These arise when time spent on roleperformance in one domain precludes time spent in the otherdomain because of depletion of energy or stress.
Strain-hased conflicts: These arise when strain in one roleaffects an employee's performance in another role. This typeof conflict does not connote conflicting demands. Rather, itoccurs when the demands from one domain cause tension,anxiety, fatigue, or dissatisfaction for the employee therebyreducing his/her personal resources of energy and physical ormental capacity. When employee is tending to a terminallysick spouse or parent, the mental and physical strain resultingfrom the experience may hamper the employee's performanceat work.
Behavior-based conflicts: These occur when there isincompatibility between the behavior patters that are desirablein the two domains and employee is unable to adjust behaviorwhen moving from one domain to another. Behavior-basedconflict too, need not involve conflicting demands. It occurswhen a behavior developed in one domain interferes with therole performance in another domain.
Conflict between work and family (life) is viewed interms of the interference of the demands from family role onthe performance of an individual's work role. Most firmsdeveloped HR practices that would provide the employeewith time off for fulfilling family demands. Work demandsare also equally likely to interfere with an individual'scapacity to fulfill family (life) demands.
Work-Life Balance: Management ChallengeThe primary purpose of organizations is business,
there may be a fundamental conflict between the efficiencyand productivity oriented values of an organization on onehand and the work-life needs of employees, on the other.Since organizations have to jointly manage this competingvalue, employees may often receive mixed-messages relatedto work-life balance. In order to create a family-friendlyworkplace, an organization must design and implementbenefits, practices and policies to help employees balancetheir work and non-work lives by providing provisions forflexible work schedules, dependent care supports etc. that
allow employees to simultaneously fulfill work and familyresponsibilities.
Organization must create work place culture andclimates that reflect concern for employees' lives outside ofwork. It is also important for organizations to periodicallyreview current work processes and practices to determinewhich ones lead to work inefficiencies and employees stress.Employers are still struggling to understand how to bestimplement work-life balance programmes and policies toreally make them work well so as to meet their dual agenda ofemployee well-being and benefits for the company.Moreover, there will always be employees who are willing toput their career before their family and personal needs-this setof employees are likely to be most promote able, since theywill be willing to do whatever the company needs withoutletting family demands come in the way. What really keepsemployees here is the sense among them that they are all seenas people first, not just employees.
Financial implications for other factors are typicallynot included in benefits calculations. These include financialimprovements associated with reduced recruiting, trainingand related replacement costs, since employees who aresatisfied with their work/life situation are less likely to turnover.
Women in different cadresThere are changes in large part due to a significant
cultural shift in parental perspective that is, an increasedacceptance of giving education to girls that allows for thepossibility of women working outside the home, contributingeconomically to the family and even pursuing a career. Withmore Indian women in the workforce, a number of rates offemale workers in rural areas are 31 percent and 11.6 percentin urban areas.
Employment numbers for women, further detailed inwomen workers in the 21*' century-Unemployment andUnderemployment, indicate that of India's 397 millionworkers, 123.9 million are women: 106 million women are inthe rural areas and 18 million in the urban areas. However,only 7 percent of India's labor force is in the organized sector(including workers on regular salaries in registeredcompanies), with the remaining workers (93 percent) in theunorganized or informal sectors.
As a brief comparison, in the United States in 2008,of the 121 million women ages 16 years and older, 72 million(59.5 percent) were labor force participants. Womencomprised 46.5 percent of the total U.S labor force (68million women were employed in the United Stats-75 percentof employed women worked in full-time jobs and 25 percentworked on a part-time basis). Women are projected to accountfor 49 percent of the increase in total labor force between2006 and 2010. In 2008, the largest percentage of employed
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Advances In Management I Vol. 5 (6) June (2012)
women (39 percent) worked in management, professional andrelated occupations and women accounted for 51 percent ofall workers in the high-paying management, professional andrelated occupation.
Globally, the number of women senior managers inlarge corporations is low. The march 2009 report, womenCEOs of the fortune 1000, published by Catalyst (the U.Sfirm working to expand opportunities for women andbusiness), identifies the women CEOs of the forttme 500companies, 15 CEOs are women, including Indian, Indra K.Nooyi, PepsiCo, Inc. The statistics at the CEO level of theselarge companies clearly show that there is much progress tobe made for women world wide at this level of management.Women India has held important roles in politics, socialorganizations and administration. There is a need for educatedwomen to reach very high level in the government and thenumber of women in the corporate sector is graduallygrowing.
In this back ground the present study focuses on therelationship between Role Efficacy and EmotionalIntelligence as related to work-life balance:
Role Eflïcacy: The performance of a person working in anorganization depends on his ones' own potentialeffectiveness, technical competence, managerial experience,etc. as well as on the design of the role that performs in anorganization. The integration of a person and a role comesabout when the latter is able to fulfill the needs of theindividual and when the individual in turn is able tocontribute to the evolution of the role. The effectiveness of aperson's role in an organization will depend upon his ownpotential effectiveness, the potential effectiveness of the roleand the organization climate. This potential effectiveness canbe termed efficacy. Personal efficacy is the potentialeffectiveness of a person in personal and interpersonalsituations. Role efficacy is the potential effectiveness of anindividual occupying a particular role in an organization. Roleefficacy can be seen as the psychological factor underlyingrole effectiveness.
Emotional intelligence (EI): It describes the ability,capacity, skill or, in the case of the trait EI model, a self-perceived grand ability to identify, assess, manage and controlthe emotions of one's self, of others and of groups. Differentmodels have been proposed for the definition of EI anddisagreement exists as to how the term should be used.Despite these disagreements, which are often highlytechnical, the ability EI and trait EI models (but not the mixedmodels) enjoy support in the literature and have successfulapplications in different domains. It is believed thatemployees' emotions matter because they drive one'sperformance. Emotions at work place, generally, fall into thecategory of positive (good) and negative (bad) emotions.Positive emotions are those feelings of an individual that are
favorable to the attainment of organizational goals whilenegative emotions are those that are perceived to bedestructive for the organization. Emotions influence the taskon which an employee is working, the efforts he/she puts andhow he influences other employees around him. In otherwords, what employees feel and how they express theiremotions affects their performance.
More companies are realizing that encouragingemotional intelligence skills is a vital component of theirmanagement philosophy. Organization does not compete withproducts alone: how well it uses its people is more importantfor its survival.
Literature ReviewThe demands and presstu-es of work and family may
give rise to work-life balance issues to an individual.Freedman and Greenhaus'"* reveal that women in workforcehave increased considerably, however women face a lot ofissues and challenges. They are still seen as the primarycaretakers of the home and family, even if they work just asmuch as men. Work role is often seen as secondary to familyroles. Not just men but women also hold themselves and otherwomen to the homemaker standard. Women spend more timeon housework, child care and family responsibilities. Womenused to spend almost 24 percent of their time on housework in1966 to 30 percent of housework in 2005. However womenmiss more work for child care. 20 percent of women take careof both children and elders.
Greenhaus and Beutell'^ defined work-familyconflict as 'a form of inter-role conflict in which the rolepressures from the two domains, that is, work and family, aremutually non-compatible so that meeting demands in onedomain makes it difficult to meet demands in the other'. Thatis, participation in the work role is made more difficult byvirtue of participation in the family and vice versa. The majorconcern in this most widely used definition of work-familyconflict is that role conflicts cause due to problems of roleparticipation and emotional intelligence. Hence, difference invalues, social relationships and requirements between workand family do not constitute conflict per se.
Waite and Gallagher^^ documented the tensionswithin and between dual career couples brought about by thetransformation of marriage and family life. At the personallevel, marriage and family functioning have becomefundamentally personal choices and responsibilities, makingthe maintenance of both more vulnerable. At the culturallevel, while traditional values such as gender role ideologiesare constantly being challenged, balance related to theimportance of work life and personal life still persists to roleefficacy and emotional intelligence.
Landsman'^ disclosed the employer providedresources can help women a great deal in balancing work-life
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Advances In Management I Vol. 5 (6) June (2012)
balance issues. It employers provide facilities like onsite childcare or referral, it would help in decreasing absenteeism andturnover from work. It would further help in increasingwomen employee's willingness to work overtime, from workand take-home dinner, family-friendly benefits packages andexercise equipments can help in removing the stress ofworking women in a big way. Thus to conclude one can saythat flexible work time, job sharing, telecommuting, personalleave, childcare facilities completely rely on degree of womenefficacy and her emotional intelligence.
Bandura^ defines self-efficacy as an individual'sbelief in her ability to produce designated levels ofperformance. Self-efficacy is also a measure of an employee'sconfidence in her abilities to marshal personal resources anddeploy an appropriate response strategy to address jobsituations.
According to the theoretical model of Bar-On"' ,̂emotional intelligence is defined as a sum of emotional andsocial competences that determine the modalities with whicha person relates to both hirn/herself and to others in order tocope with environmental pressure and requests. Emotionalintelligence is thus, in this model, an important factor indetermining success in life and more generically, influencesthe well-being of individuals. Emotional intelligence developsover time, changes in the course of life and can be increasedby means of training programs.
Chan" study analyzed the relationship betweenemotional intelligence and career women role-efficacy byusing a scale specific to demonstrate their role-efficacy. It isanticipated that this study would be able to demonstratewhether or not differences in emotional intelligence exist inrelation to the experience and/or age of women and thetypology of the organization and more generally, to evaluatethe relationship between emotional intelligence and careerwomen' role-efficacy. It was expected that, also with regardto the most targeted construct of women manager role-efficacy, the impact of several dimensions of emotionalintelligence would emerge. Studying this relationship in Indiacan, furthermore, draw attention to the existence of theselinks in a different cultural context.
The term emotional intelligence, rendered popularby Goleman", was first used by Mayer and Salovey'' todescribe the capacity individuals have for monitoring theirfeelings and those of others, discriminating between varioustypes of emotions and using this information to channelthoughts and actions. They extended the definition to includethe capacity for perceiving emotions, comparing emotionsand feelings, understanding information caused by emotionand being able to handle such emotions.
A 2005 study of senior women in public and privatesector firms, titled women in management in the neweconomic environment: the case of India, found that women
look for work from economic necessity and for personalgoals. Women in lower to middle socioeconomic status seekincome opportunities and those in the upper middle classpursue a career for professional ambitions. Women withhigher education have more interest in independence, arecareer-oriented and interested in quickly moving up theorganizational ladder. At the time of this study, 40 percent offemale students attended management institutes in India. Thekey challenge for career women is managing both theirtraditional roles as housewives and their career. Womenexperience great pressure to work hard to prove them in theworkplace.
To assess emotional intelligence in womenmanager^", it is necessary to sustain them by means ofinformative activities and guidance that entail the use ofemotional intelligence in relation to empathy and other socio-interpersonal areas'". Career women frequently express aconcern of being inadequately prepared to lead suchinterventions and feel challenge to take on such a role'. Thismeans that the items are specifically attributed to careerwomen role-efficacy and enable study of a vast range of skillsthat manager consider important in order to perform well,without, however, being too specific and thus rendering itimpossible to compare career women that belong to differentcontexts, level or degree of performance.
HypothesesThe following hypotheses were formulated:
• There is a significant relationship between role efficacyand emotional intelligence.
• Career women are high on Emotional Intelligence andRole Efficacy aspects.
MethodologyData sources: The study is empirical in nature and relied onsurvey method. It is based on both primary and secondarysources of data. Primary data were collected with the help ofstructured questionnaires. Secondary data were collected frombooks, journals and websites with HR managers' interviews.
Tools used for the Data CollectionData were collected by administering the following
tools:
• Demographic profile data sheet
• Emotional Intelligence Scale
• Role Efficacy Scale
Sample chosen for the studyThe sample consists of 63 career women. The
samples were selected from Government organizations andprivate companies in the service sector in Hyderabad, AndhraPradesh. A convenient sampling method was adopted in
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Advances In Management 1 Vol. 5 (6) June (2012)
choosing sample.
Results and DiscussionThe present research highlights the work life balance
issues. Table 1 shows demographic profile of women whoseage ranged from 23 to 60 years and had an average age of 40(s.d. - 7.28). Career women represent various levels ofmanagement. The majority of the career women wereassistant officers (ASO/AAO, Jr. Executive) middlemanagement (63.4%). Other categories were: Gazetted / Sr.Executives-upper middle (34.9%), top management (vicepresents, deputy secretary and so on) (1.6%). Their educationqualification ranged from graduation (71%) to post graduate(28.6%). Their work experience ranged from 1-35 years, ofthem maximum 25.3% of women had 15-20 years experience.97% women were married and more than 50 percent havechildren under the age of 18. Family. status of women isNuclear family (82.5 %) and Joint family (17.5 %). Womenwhile traveling to work place felt inconvenient due to lack ofbus frequency (3.2%) and heavy traffic (25.4%).
Table 2 shows that there is a significant (F=.OO5)relationship between work experience and emotionalintelligence of career women. This assumption of the studyfinds support in the work Chan' ' which states that there is nooverall significance on demographic profile on emotionalintelligence.
The result in table 3 shows the mean values of theemotional intelligence and the potential for effectiveness inthe organizational roles and functions of career women.
Seventeen emotional intelligence variables and role efficacyhave above average scores. It means career women workinghave an above average ability to manage their own emotionsof with whom they interact. It is assumed that an aboveaverage amotmt of emotional intelligence possessed by themwould help them to function effectively in their respectiveroles in the organization/s. This assumption of theinvestigators has empirical grounding, as other researchers''^'working in the area of emotional intelligence and the relateddomain of knowledge have maintained similar assumptions.The above average level of emotional intelligence possessedby social work professionals is assumed to help them in themanagement of felt emotions that they experience ininteractions with others around.
Then this can in turn increase their affectivecommitment to the organization by generating enthusiasm fortheir work. This assumption of the study finds support in thework of Caner and Salovey^. Mean values reveals the resultsobtained for the potential role effectiveness of career women.While looking at the results obtained, it can be said that theoverall role effectiveness of career women in the study isabove average.
. Such a relatively high level of the role effectivenessof career women can be assumed to be a function of theirperceiving their roles to provide them with opportunities forprofessional development and fiading themselves wellintegrated with the roles assigned. Therefore, it is assumedthat these career women would tend to interact freely with thepeople and the environment and feel satisfied with life.
Table ADifferent Pbases of Work-Life Balances issues
Work-life issues
Home issues
Support
Tbe macbine age
Work and family were twoindependent domains
Traditional roles with menworking and women workingcare of household chores
none
Tbe industrial age
Work started spilling into familytime and was often carried home
Dual career couples with both menand women working but womenstill tending the household chores
Availability of help like babysitters, crèches, old-age homes andmaids
Tbe networked age
Workdays span 24 hours with brief timeintervals for non-work activities
Dual career couples with both men andwomen working as well as attending tohome issues
Hands-free executives support firms thatprovide services as diverse as managingthe laundry and the kind's homework.
Source: Business Today'
Table 4 shows the impact of role efficacy onemotional intelligence of career women. These valuesmeasure the strength and direction of the linear relationshipbetween the two variables.
Emotional Intelligence ScaleEmotional Intelligence Scale (EIS) used was
developed by Matrix Life Syjjem Pvt. Ltd. converted into afive point scale. It has 43 items grouped into seventeenemotional intelligence and they are: Capability to Express
(CE), Purposefulness (PUR), Self-reliance (SR), IdentifyingEmotions (ID), Support Building(SB), Empathy (EMP),Logical Analysis (LA), Initiative(INT), Ability to Cope (AC),Anger Management(AM), Happiness Orientation (HO),Confidence (CON), Assertiveness (ASS), Decisiveness (DEC),Civic Sum / Accountability (CS/ACC), adaptability (ADA) andPatience (PAT). Participants respond by indicating theiragreement to each of the 43 statements using five point scaleranging fi-om 1 (strongly disagree) to 5(strongly agree). The EIShas demonstrated high internal consistence with that for self-
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Advances In Management I Vol. 5 (6) June (2012)
ratings, the alpha coefficients (Cronbach's Alpha; N=43) is.950.
Role Efficacy Scale (RES)The Role Efficacy Scale (RES) used was
developed by Pareek^^. It is a structured instrumentconsisting of twenty traits of statements, divided into tendimensions. The ten dimensions of the RES are: Centrality(Cen), Self-role Integration (Sri), Pro-activity(Pro),Creativity(Cre), Inter-role Linkage (Irl), HelpingRelationships (Hrel), Super-ordination (Sup), Influence(Infu),Personal Growth (Pg), Confrontation (Conf). RoleEfficacy Score (RES) has three alternatives which are pre-weighted. Each dimension of role efficacy and the scoringpattern followed is -i-2, +1 or -1.
Out of seventeen variables of EmotionalIntelligence and ten variables of Role Efficacy it may beobserved (table 4) that emotional intelligence jointlypredicts (23.5%) significant to the role effectiveness of thecareer women in their organizational lives. That is variablesrelated to Ability to cope (F=0.340), Anger management(F=0.25), Happiness orientation (F=0.27) and Confidence(F=0.279) are significant between .01 level to .05 level.Apart from these variables, we may also observe that (13%)variables such as self reliance, identifying emotions, supportbuilding and so on also show the significance on the roleefficacy variables. As researched by Bandura'', people withhigh confidence in their capabilities handle work-life relatedfactors effectively and approach difficult task as challengesto be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided.
The relationships between role efficacy andemotional intelligence variables predict that an increase inthe amount of emotional intelligence of the career womenwill cause corresponding increment in their potential roleeffectiveness. In other words, as the career women becomeefficient in managing their own emotions and those ofothers with whom they interact in their organizational lives,they engage more often in giving and receiving help fromothers whenever the need arises and the like. The analysisreveals that the career women are high in role effectivenessand emotional intelligence. It is asserted that role efficacyhas an impact on emotional intelligence. The present studyis statistically significant on four components of the RoleEfficacy with Emotional Intelligence of Career women.Thus, hypothesis one as stated in the present study issupported.
ImplicationsThe research study has highlighted factors
affecting role efficacy and emotional intelligence. Theimplications would benefit organization for betterunderstanding about nuances emerging from work-life. Thequality of work life provided by an organization to a large
extent influences the work - life balance those womenemployees are trying to achieve. Therefore, it is necessary forany organization to implement a number of measures like flexi-timings, recreational facility, crèches in work place and goodteam building initiatives so that they build reputation asemployers of choice.
Table 1Demographic profile of sample N=63
^^^HGharacteristicS^^li Itrequencyj IpercentiAge
23-30
31-37
38-45
46-63
54-60
5
10
30
13
5
7.9
15.9
47.9
20.6
7.9
Educational qualifícation
Graduates
Post graduates
45
18
71.4
28.6
Designation
V.P, D.S,
Gazetted/ Sr. Executive
ASO/AAO/Junior Executive
1
22
40
1.6
34.9
63.5
Annual income in lakhs
1-5
5-10
54
9
85.7
14.3
Work hours
7
9
10
57
5
1
90.5
7.9
1.6
Marital status
married
unmarried
61
2
96.8
3.2
Type of family
Nuclear family
Joint family
61
11
82.5
17.5
Children status
Under 18 years
Above 18 years
31
30
50.8
49.2
Inconvenience in transport
Difficult to get bus
Long distance
traffic
No difficult
2
1
16
44
3.2
1.6
25.4
69.8
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Advances In Management 1 Vol. 5 (6) June (2012)
Table 2
Demographic effect on Emotional Intelligence Impact of work experience on Emotional Intelligence
ANOVA
Role efficacy Total
Emotional Intellignece
t . ; . , " • • ' • ' - . . . •
Between Groups
Within Groups
Total
Between Groups
Within Groups
Total
^Sum of Squares
235.630
2154.688
2390.317
12320.375
28713.276
41033.651
Df ^
7
55
62
7
55
62
Mean Square
33.6661
39.176
1760.054
522.060
. •- F , . ..
.859
3.371
; Sig.
.544
.005
Table 3Mean and standard deviations of Emotional Intelligence
and Role Efficacy of Career women (N = 63)
Descriptive StatisticsCapability to express
Purposeful
Self reliance
Identifying emotions
Support building
Empathy
Logical analysis
Initiative
Ability to cope
Anger management
Happiness orientation
Confidence
Assertiveness
Decisive
Civic sum/accountability
Adaptability
Patience
Emotional intelligence
Centrality
Integration
Pro-activity
Creativity
Inter-role linkage
Helping relationship
Super ordination
Influence
Growth-
Confrontation
Role efficacy
Mean14.49
4.22
18.78
28.33
7.63
12.17
16.32
3.68
11.4
3.25
12.08
16.06
3.76
4.54
4.38
3.43
3.16
167.7
2.1
3.16
2.02
2.7
2.97
3.3
1.63
2.05
2.33
3.53
25.73
Std. Deviation
2.552
0.812
2.997
4.385
1.649
2.311
3.073
0.93
2.083
0.967
2.611
2.758
0.911
6.153
0.923
1.174
1.322
25.732
0.995
1.334
1.039
1.444
1.47
1.352
1.579
1.25
1.107
0.97
6.274
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Advances In Management
Table 4Correlation coefficients of Role Efficacy with Emotional Intelligence for Career women (N= 63)
I Vol. 5 (6) June (2012)
M taCapability to express 0.178 -0.16 0.24 0.16 -0.24 0.064 0.04 0.07 -0.07 .326(**) 0.108í^irposeful -0.027 -O 0.05 0.06 0.03 -0.08 -0.1 0.16 0.2 0.209 0.11
Self reliance 0.007 -0.08 0.15 0.19 -0.2 0.12 0.15 .408(**) 0.09 .393(**) 0.235
Identifying emotions 0.004 -0.12 0.18 0.21 -0.13 0.105 0.09 .274(*) 0.17 .443(**) 0.228Support building 0.041 -0.09 0.21 0.04 0.04 -0.12 0.02 0.2 -0.05 0.217 0.095Empathy -0.127 -.260(*) .0.08 -0.1 -0.06 .267(*) -0 .293(*) 0.1 .443(**) 0.11Logical analysis 0.027 -0.08 0.2 0.08 -0.01 0.046 0.07 0.24 0.13 .253(*) 0.174Initiative -0.089 -0.18 .256(*) 0.1 -0.08 -0.1 0.09 0.04 -0.02 0.122 0.032Ability to cope 0.168 -0.02 0.22 .260(*) 0.01 0.077 0.12 .333(**) 0.18 .453(**) .340(**)
Anger management 0.125 0.24 0.22 0.11 0.01 0.113 0.15 0.18 0.07 -0.04 . .251(*)Happiness orientation 0.171 -0.04 .261(*) 0.12 0.089 0.11 0.25 0.13 .296(*) .271(*)Confidence 0.115 0.06 0.21 0.14 0.01 0.008 0.2 .280(*) 0.11 .273(*) .279(*)
Assertiveness -0.028 -0.08 0.07 .251(*) -0.24 -0.01 0.13 0.11 0.1 .359(**) 0.135Decisiveness 0.002 "-0.12 0.16 0.01 -.264(*) 0.05 0.09 0.14 -0.02 0.125 0.021Civic sum/accountability -0.145 -0.19 0.06 0.09 -0.09 -0 0.01 0.17 0.1 0.24 0.038Adaptability 0.144 0.07 0.13 .353(**) -0.13 0.08 0.16 -0.12 0.04 0.217 0.226Patience 0.074 -0.01 0.03 0.19 -0.15 0.117 0.18 -0.1 -.257(*) -0.05 0.029Emotional intelligence . 0.062 -0.12 .252(*) 0.18 -0.16 0.095 0.14 0.09 .402(N**) .: 0.236
••Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
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(Received 23"* Februaiy 2012, accepted 20* May 2012)
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