Resumen de A behavioral approach to emotional intelligence conceptual and measurement issues
The concept "emotional intelligence" (EI) resonates in the business world (Domagalski, 1999), and many authors have called for more research that clearly conceptualizes it (Sala, 2002; Becker, 2003, Day and Carroll, 2004). Within the controversy of defining EI, the behavioral approach, defining and measuring EI in terms of competences, has not received much attention.
This dissertation is based on data of three medium-sized Spanish organizations (n=223) that were involved in a competency management project based on emotional and social competencies as proposed by Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee (2002). The rationale of studying the appropriateness of the emotional competency model seems relevant and will serve to increase understanding of the field as a whole and prove its usefulness within organizational settings.
The starting point is a generic overview of the psychological and philosophical grounding of emotional intelligence. Then the scope of the analysis is reduced, step by step, to conclude with some concrete research proposals. These proposals are related to three major research areas within the field of EI that will mould the framework in which the empirical part of the dissertation will be inserted: the construct, discriminant and predictive validity of EI. Structural Modeling techniques available in the SEM program LISREL 8.51 software are used to enter the empirical analyses of the dissertation.
Results provide a comprehensive framework for the emotional and social competencies proposed by the EI model of Boyatzis and Goleman. The dissertation provides support to the idea of personality being something different from competencies as a proof of discriminant validity. Concerning the relationship between competencies and performance, predictive validity is confirmed empirically.
