Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Employee Service Industry in Malaysia

This research study aims to examine the impact of emotional intelligence (EI) on the employee service industry in Malaysia. It explores the importance of emotional intelligence in providing exceptional customer service and satisfaction. The research objectives include analyzing the current state of the employee service sector in Malaysia, identifying issues, and recommending strategies for improvement. The study will help understand the role of emotional intelligence in the service industry and its impact on employee performance.

Running head:
The impact of emotional intelligence on the employee service industry in Malaysia
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction.........................................................................................................................2
1.1 Background......................................................................................................................2
1.2 Problem Statement...........................................................................................................3
1.3 Research Aim, objectives and Research questions..........................................................3
2. Literature Review...............................................................................................................5
3.Research Design and Methodology........................................................................................9
4.Time frame............................................................................................................................11
5.References.............................................................................................................................13

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1. Introduction
1.1 Background
Emotional intelligence abbreviated as “EL” can be defined as the potential to identify
one’s emotion and also manage the same along with emotions of other individuals
(Humphrey, Ashforth and Diefendorff 2015). Three skills form the emotional intelligence of
a person: emotional awareness; capacity to recognize individual emotion; to have the
potential to harness the identified emotions and the application of the identified emotions to
tasks lie problem solving, thinking and decision making; and the capability to administer the
emotions that include regulating both individual emotion at the time of necessity and also
managing the emotion of the other (Sánchez-Álvarez, Extremera and Fernández-Berrocal
2016). Managing of other’s emotions include cheering them up at time of sadness,
understanding their complex mind set and sympathizing with an individual’s predicament
(Andrei et al. 2016). Emotional intelligence EL develops and evolves with age and advancing
maturity, making an individual aware of his or her immediate emotional environment
(Cabello 2016).
The concept of emotional intelligence is an ever evolving significant topic in the
employee industry in the recent years (Ingram et al. 2017). Though the concept is a highly
argumentative topic and has drawn criticism from significant people (Petrides et al. 2016).
Human interaction in the employee service industry is a key dimension needed to provide
exceptional consumer service and satisfaction (Kearney et al. 2017). Emotional Intelligence
or EL is especially important in the employee service sector where there is a persistent
interaction between employees and customers (Guy and Lee 2015). Appropriate employee
behavior creates the climate of service (Cho et al. 2016). Emotional intelligence is as
important as technological intelligence for performance (Jung and Yoon 2016). Emotional

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intelligence or EI is one of the many salient attributes as it directly impacts the employee
service industry (Gabriel 2016).
Emotional competence is essential in any industry, job or organization to handle
critical circumstances and relationships. Malaysia is an ever growing economy for multiple
services. Malaysia is considered a service economy as the nation contributes to nearly 54.2%
of the country’s GDP as recorded in 2017. Malaysian service industry has grown rapidly in
the last decade to cater to the growing demand of the natives (Routray, Dash and Ray 2017).
To ensure efficient and quality service, the numerous service companies in the country have
deployed several strategies to deal with the growing demand. The country’s service
companies demand high EI (emotional intelligence) from their employees to achieve a high
market niche (Honea and Peter 2017).
1.2 Problem Statement
Emotional Intelligence is a principal factor in the employee service industry to serve
the many demands of consumers. There are numerous studies done on the connection of
emotional intelligence with employee services and the employee service industry. There were
also researches done to comprehend the importance of impression or effect of emotional
intelligence (EI) of employees of the service industry. Despite, there is no research conducted
by far to examine and acknowledge the impact of emotional intelligence of the employee
service sector in Malaysia.
1.3 Research Aim, Research Objectives and Research questions
Aim:

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This research project aims to carefully examine and study the impact of emotional
intelligence (EI) on the employee service industry of Malaysia. The magnitude of the effect
of EI on the Malaysian employee service industry will be thoroughly analyzed in this
particular research study.
Research Objectives:
The following objectives will be taken into consideration while conducting the
particular research:
 To analyze the current state of employee service sector of Malaysia
 To identify issues in the Malaysian employee service industry
 To analyze the impact of emotional intelligence on Malaysian employee service
industry
 To recommend strategies for mitigating these issues in the Malaysian employee
service industry.
Research Questions:
 What is the current state of Malaysian employee service sector?
 What are the issues in the employee service sector in Malaysia?
 What are the impacts of emotional intelligence (EI) on the Malaysian
employee service industry?

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2. Literature Review
According to LIEVENS and Chan (2017), in the past years social intelligence,
practical intelligence and emotional intelligence most specially has gained the deserved
attention both in academic and in the real industry. EI is the capacity to comprehend an
individual’s emotions and the emotions of another individual. Emotional intelligence (EI) is
one of the attributes to understand another human being and manage other people. The
important characteristics of emotional intelligence include recognizing, understanding and
managing of own emotion. The second characteristics involve the recognition, understanding
and influencing the emotions of other individual. In general an individual need to have
emotional awareness in their immediate surroundings. Emotional intelligence has fueled
enough criticisms and controversies in its application. Emotional intelligence is applied by
companies as a marking stake to hire employees in the service industry. The company before
hiring individuals, measure their capacity to face difficult situation, reaction towards change,
failures and setbacks. The definition, operationalization and dimensionality of emotional
intelligence have faced questioned. Emotional intelligence has garnered attention and
importance in recent times.
According to Wheeler (2016), human interactions are important to survive in the
society. Societal interactions are required to understand the need and emotions of individuals.
Organizations not only look for technical skills in their employees but also expect the
employee to have certain soft skills. Soft skills are important in the service industry to
provide quality service to the customers. An individual who ha sound soft skills is an
emotionally intelligent person. The author defined EI as the capability to recognize, sense,
comprehend and the ability to apply the acquired information effectively as a source of
energy, influence and information. The author highlights the positive aspects of emotions in

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the service filed. Emotional intelligence can be broken down to five important aspects,
namely: empathy, self assessment, self motivation, self awareness and civic skills. The
fundamental component of EI is self awareness. Being aware means to know and understand
an individual’s own feelings. Self-awareness is to understand one’s own self completely. Self
– management can be defined as the management of one’s own emotion and their response to
worldly situations. The basic explanation of self management is that how an individual
controls the internal and external behavior with respect to the circumstances. Self motivation
is an expending energy that guides and individual in a specific direction and to value the cost
of the situation. Empathy, to define in simple terms is to have the capability to share and
understand the feelings of other individuals. Empathy makes an individual a team player and
allows the person to have better understanding of the effects that individual actions can have
on other individual. Social skills involve effective communication, listening skills,
circumstance based appropriate assertiveness, the potential to take and receive positive
criticism, capability to work successfully in teams and being emotionally honest and
expressing emotions appropriately. Social skills involve the individual to amalgamate the
above skills to be socially sound.
EI or emotional intelligence is highly discussed in relation to business. The notion of
emotional intelligence (EI) has gained major prominence in the recent decade (Carson,
Carson and Birkenmeier 2016). Touted as a construct that assists enterprises in lessening
turnover time, recognize transformational members or leaders, expedite executive coaching,
creating effective group work, improving company or organizational culture, enhancing
employee acceptance of radical and stimulating creativity. Organizations and companies
benefit greatly from a deeper understanding of emotional intelligence. The role played by
emotional intelligence is crucial in any organization, it is important that there is a
psychometrically-sound, readily-available emotional intelligence instrument. Emotional

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intelligence is a multidimensional construct. There are five major underlying attributes of EI
(emotional intelligence) they are: mood regulation, empathetic response, interpersonal skills,
self awareness and internal motivation. These attributes are used in the development of EI
(emotional intelligence). An EI person performs his or work efficiently and emotionally. A
high EI helps the individual to understand the need and requirement of another and provide
help to the ones in need.
According to the authors Darvishmotevali, Altinay and De Vita (2018), emotional
intelligence has effective and consequential effect on employees of an organization and there
are means to inspect the effect of EI on the execution of work by the employees. Emotionally
intelligent workers possess better capacity to manage and understand their own emotions.
They possess the power to understand and feel the emotional need of other individuals, their
needs and requirements. Emotionally intelligent individuals in the workplace are productive
and provide better customer service as they can understand the wants of the client. The
individuals have the ability to foretell any circumsantial uncertainty and quickly adapt to
changing environment. They can relate to the emotional requirement of the other people and
provide help accordingly. Empathy is the key for these individuals. Emotionally intelligent
people are creative in dealing with customers and colleague. Employees who have high level
of cultural intelligence is seen to possess the ability to quickly adopt to any circumstantial
changes, based on the culture of the consumer and have the tendency to explore new purpose
and scheme to increase customer satisfaction in the best possible way.
According to Deshmukh (2016) EI has significant affect on employee productivity
and accomplishment. The distinctive components of EI are: self regulation, self motivation,
self awareness and emotional awareness. The author identifies human interaction as key
factor for the productivity of an organization and discusses about the direct link between

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employee performance and emotional intelligence. The numerous changes in the work
environment both internal and external are sculpted by emotional intelligence. Emotional
intelligence or EI of the employees aid them in determining their response towards their job
and it also shows their associations in group activity and team work. It is important for the
organization to include emotional intelligence factor as a measure to hire employees.
Analysis of emotional intelligence of the employees in the service industry helps the
management to understand the capability of the employee to perform in team. High emotional
intelligence increase employee productivity which positively affects customer satisfaction.
Emotional intelligence or EI determines interpersonal relationships of employees in an
enterprise or organization so it is important for enterprises or organizations to organize
development and training program to ameliorate emotional intelligence. Technical
proficiency molded with emotional intelligence has the capacity to determine work efficiency
but emotional intelligence shapes relationship variables of the individual with peers,
subordinates and supervisors. Each component of emotional intelligence plays a vital role in
determining how well an individual is emotionally intelligent. High emotional intelligence
plays a crucial role in the service industry as it is noticed that it increases productivity and
brings about customer satisfaction. For any service proving organization, customer
satisfaction is an important factor. To understand the need of the customer, sympathize with
their condition builds better interpersonal bonds. The key aspect of emotional intelligence to
understand one’s own emotion clearly which in turn helps in understanding the emotions of
the other. Managing one’s own emotion leads to the proper management of the emotions of
the other individual’s in the immediate environment. It is crucial to be aware of one’s own
emotion to respond to any changing and complex situation.
According to Hwa and Amin (2016), emotional labor and EI have direct effect on the
workplace behavior which is deviant organizational behavior and organizational citizenship

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conduct. Role of employee service industry in Malaysia is vital for the growth of the nation’s
economy. Emotional intelligence is important to increase productivity of the organization.
The self awareness of the employees has helped them to analyze their own emotions to
understand their behavior in the workplace. High emotion intelligence of the employee has
proven to have produced better understanding of the situation and customer dealing. EI or
emotional intelligence aids the employees to manage the sentiments of themselves which in
turn helps them to clearly understand the emotions of their colleagues. In one of the
Malaysian studies it was found that EI moderates the relationships among emotional labor
(EL), satisfaction in job, intention to quit and emotional exhaustion. As the Malaysian
economy has become a well driven service economy, a lot of organizations have sprung up to
provide services to customer.
3.Research Design and Methodology
There are mainly three kinds of investigation used in conducting research designs,
they are: exploratory research, casual research and descriptive research. Exploratory research
is mainly carried to ascertain the course of the problem at the primary stage in decision
making. This method cannot be used as conclusive solutions to the existing problems.
Descriptive research is a statistical approach to the research to describe the prevailing
condition. Casual research is used to report the cause-and-effect relationships between
dependent and independent variables. For this research descriptive research will be used.
Positivism approach of research will be relevant for this particular research study.
Data collection method:
There are several methods to collect data which can be in the form of surveys,
questionnaires, interviews, content analysis and observations. There are two methods of

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collecting data: Primary method and secondary method. Primary method of data collection
includes data acquired by self that is the raw data collected on the basis of survey, interview
and questionnaire. Secondary method of data collection involves gathering data from
previous research papers, journals and other sources.
Data analysis plan:
Qualitative and quantitative are the two kinds of data that are gathered to conduct a
research study (Silverman 2016). Qualitative data will be the data accumulated from
interviewing the employees and the survey conducted of the selected organization. To acquire
quantitative information, a review will be directed towards the representatives of the selected
organization in Malaysia.
Sampling method:
Sampling method refers to the strategy which is used for the selection of an objective
populace to collect relevant information and data of the impact of emotional intelligence on
the employee service industry in Malaysia. To conduct a study on the impact of EI on the
Malaysian employee service industry, a sample of 120 individuals will be taken as the sample
size from a service industry.
Accessibility issues:
It is considered that accessibility might rise to be an issue. Accessibility of the
employees can be possible if permission is granted. The researches will interview the
employees to have stronger comprehension on the subject.
Ethical Issues:

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The employees of the company selected for this particular research, consent will be
taken from the employees on whom surveys will be conducted. The participants will be made
well aware of the purpose of the study. Voluntary participation will be conducted and the
employees will have complete right to opt out of the survey procedure or interview anytime
during the process of the survey or the interview. Relevant information will not be hidden
from employees who have volunteered in the survey. If there are queries regarding the survey
or about the research, such queries will be immediately responded to and resolved.
Research limitations:
There are limitations to the research which could rise in the middle of the survey
process. The interview questions might intervene in the personal space of the employee and
the employee can be hesitant to answer few questions. Some organization personnel might
seem reluctant to answer questions lucidly. Lastly data gets compromised because of the
personal attitude of the employee towards the interview or survey.
4.Time frame
0-2 3-6 7-8 9-10 14th
Activities
of the
Research
Week Week Week Week Week
Research
topic
selection
Literature
Review
Collection
of data
Analysis of

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data
Final
submission
of research
thesis
Figure 1: Gantt Chart
(Source: Created by the author)

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5.References
Wheeler, R.E., 2016. Soft skills-the importance of cultivating emotional intelligence. AALL
Spectrum, 16(06), pp.28-31.
LIEVENS, F.R.O. and Chan, D., 2017. Practical intelligence, emotional intelligence, and
social intelligence.
Carson, K.D., Carson, P.P. and Birkenmeier, B.J., 2016. Measuring emotional intelligence:
Development and validation of an instrument. Journal of Behavioral and applied
Management, 2(1), p.810.
Hwa, M.A.C. and Amin, H., 2016. Why emotion at work matters: examining the influence of
emotional labour and emotional intelligence on workplace behaviours among service workers
in east malaysia. Kajian Malaysia, 34(1), pp.79-105.
Darvishmotevali, M., Altinay, L. and De Vita, G., 2018. Emotional intelligence and creative
performance: Looking through the lens of environmental uncertainty and cultural
intelligence. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 73, pp.44-54.
Deshmukh, G.K., 2016. Mapping Relationship between Employee Performance and
Emotional Intelligence: A Study. PACIFIC BUSINESS REVIEW INTERNATIONAL, 8(9),
pp.11-15.
Honea, H. and Peter, P.C., 2017. Emotional Intelligence, Behavioral Procrastination, and
Online (Over) consumption. In The Dark Side of Social Media (pp. 133-146). Routledge.

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Petrides, K.V., Mikolajczak, M., Mavroveli, S., Sanchez-Ruiz, M.J., Furnham, A. and Pérez-
González, J.C., 2016. Developments in trait emotional intelligence research. Emotion
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Sánchez-Álvarez, N., Extremera, N. and Fernández-Berrocal, P., 2016. The relation between
emotional intelligence and subjective well-being: A meta-analytic investigation. The Journal
of Positive Psychology, 11(3), pp.276-285.
Andrei, F., Siegling, A.B., Aloe, A.M., Baldaro, B. and Petrides, K.V., 2016. The incremental
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Cabello, R., Sorrel, M.A., Fernández-Pinto, I., Extremera, N. and Fernández-Berrocal, P.,
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Guy, M.E. and Lee, H.J., 2015. How emotional intelligence mediates emotional labor in
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Humphrey, R.H., Ashforth, B.E. and Diefendorff, J.M., 2015. The bright side of emotional
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Kearney, T., Walsh, G., Barnett, W., Gong, T., Schwabe, M. and Ifie, K., 2017. Emotional
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Inter-industry Comparison. Srusti Management Review, 10(2), pp.9-18.