Guna and Emotional Intelligence's Impact on Female Work-Life Balance

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to identify the role and relationship of Guna and Emotional Intelligence with the Work-life balance and Job Satisfaction of Female Professionals. The study will also identify the impact of Work-life balance on Job Satisfaction. The present study is still in process and in paper only few identified relationships will be explained.

Research Methodology: The sample size of the study was 339. The data was collected using both primary and secondary sources. The primary data was collected through self- structured questionnaire. The collected data was analysed using Descriptive Statistics, Smart-PLS and SPSS software.

Save your time!
We can take care of your essay

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Place an order

Findings: The finding of the study indicates that the significant relationship exists among Guna, Emotional Intelligence and Work-life balance. The relationship between the Emotional Intelligence, Work-life balance and Job Satisfaction is still need to verify.

Limitations: The study was gender and location specific. The conclusion drawn could be changed in future due to work-in progress status of the study. Implications: In both research and professional aspect the study is important. The study provides theory based empirical proofs of how Work-life balance gets affected by the Guna and Emotional Intelligence. Hence, the findings of the study provide an accurate and comprehensive lens through which the future researches can be viewed.

Originality/Value: Though there were many studies conducted on Emotional Intelligence and Work-life balance but considering Gunas, Emotional Intelligence, Work- life balance and Job Satisfaction together no literature were found.

Introduction

Work-Life Balance (WLB) has become a target for many women in organizations when it comes to employee engagement and job. Salovey & Mayer (1990) defined Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the division of societal intelligence that incorporates the capability to examine feelings and emotions and to exercise this information to direct individual’s thoughts and actions. Going up the pyramid at workplace require compromises from women with their own personal time. Without jeopardizing the wellbeing, satisfaction and overall quality of life it is a challenge for women employees to achieve balance in their life. Meeting competing demands of work and family to reach the top ladder is not only tiring but can be stressful which can lead to medical problems like heart attacks, blood pressure, PCODs, Cancer, and the list goes on. Women are facing challenges related with work life with affect her career advancements. Work-Life Balance (WLB) defines the balance among personal as well as professional lives. Therefore, Emotional Intelligence (EI) plays a chief role in determining better work life for individual which benefit organization as well as Individual (Shylaja & Prasad, 2017). EI and WLB are two key concepts in organizational environment. Emotions construct the foundation for the emotional balance to empower decision making where Gunas (Sattva, Rajas and Tamas) are very essential for EI because self-control of mind is embedded in emotional psychological processes (Rastogi & Kewalramani, 2010). Sattva Guna is related with oneness which related with self-awareness, self-regulation and self-direction means which share the core components of EI.

Need of the Study

Industrialization and Globalization had played vital role in changing status and exploring career options for women in India. Indian women are now using their knowledge, skills and education not only to upgrade their societal and professional status but proving them across the world. Study reveals that Emotional Intelligence contributes 80% to an individuals' success (Ravi Kumar, 2014). Finding a balance between the work and life is a very important point of discussion of every working woman’s life, no matter at what phase of career she is in. The more the line between the work and home is blurred, higher work-life conflict arises which leads to several health issues like mental stress, depression, anxiety disorder, and early ageing (Bakshi & Vyas 2015). The issues related with the work and life imbalance is constantly increasing which results in drop of women workforce participation rate. It is essential to test empirically that whether traits of personality (Gunas) have relationship with the EI and EI has positive role on WLB of Female Professionals or not. Therefore, the study has made attempt in that direction.

Literature Review

Emotional Intelligence and Work life Balance: Shelar (2016) conducted a study to identify the relationship between EI and WLB. In her study she found that higher level of EI indicated better WLB compared to low level of EI. Gupta (2016) explained that people with high EI will get better position in organizations and tend to develop good interpersonal relationship at workplace which also enhances the quality of work life among them. Peter & Bina (2014) concluded in his research paper that EI will increase individual and organizational performance. It also impacts the bonds a person shares inside and outside the organization, employee productivity and WLB. Bakir (2018) conducted a field study to investigate the impact of manager’s EI on employees WLB in Jordanian private hospital and he found that females are much more interested in WLB activities rather than males. He also concluded that managers in the targeted hospital possess emotional intelligence skills and hospitals also provide WLB initiatives to their employees.

Gunas and Emotional Intelligence: The Gunas are mainly accountable for our prime traits, actions and kinds of behaviour. There are three Gunas described in Bhagwat Gita. The Sattva, Rajas and Tamas (Chakraborty, 1987). In the Bhagwat Geeta Lord Krishna explained that when we do any action without expectations of result that is called Sattvik, when we do any action for the expectation of result that is Rajas and when we do any action which will create injury or harm for someday that is called Tamas (Chapter 14, Shloka 16). Sastry (1981) said that person who is Sattvik in nature will grow in their career rather than person who possess Rajasik and Tamasik characteristics. Every human being is composed of all three Gunas. Organizations interested in enhancing enlightened leadership should cultivate Sattvik traits in their employees and encourage them understand the sense of duty (Agarwalla, Agarwalla & Krishnan, 2015).

Participants and Sampling Technique

The sample composed Female Professionals in the Rajasthan region. The sampling techniques used to target the sample were snowball, judgmental and convenience sampling technique.

Reliability and Validity

To ensure construct validity: convergent validity, discriminant validity, nomological validity and face validity must be confirmed. Convergent validity ensures on the basis significance of factor loading and reliability analysis. To ensure the face validity researcher asked few questions to the panel of experts and respondents in a pilot survey like: Do you feel the questionnaire is adequately measure what it should measure? Are you satisfied with the questions framing? After analysing the results researcher found that all the experts and respondents agreed that the questionnaire is measuring what it has to measure. Hence, face validity of the questionnaire was ensured. Nomological validity ensure when a construct correlate with the other construct in a way as it should do. Observing the correlation matrix, the all possible linkages among the constructs found as per the law of nature.

The impact of EI on WLB dimensions was observed to be medium related but significant, while Guna & EI displayed medium size influence. The Guna have three dimensions that sattva, rajas and tamas, where women with Sattvik and positive Rajasik having high level of EI which help in women to balance their personal and professional arena. Women with negative Rajasik and Tamasik Guna have low level of Emotional Intelligence. The results indicate that the female professional have more Rajasik Guna because the size effect among variables is medium which means they are not completely Sattvik.

Conclusion

Individual and organizations have to share common platform to have WLB. This research shows that positive Guna helps in attaining high level of EI and better EI integrate, enhance and provide better work and family life. EI appears as key factor for low attrition rate, high productivity and organization commitment in globalized world. It means employees who possess high EI also have good WLB in their concerned department and offices.

Suggestions

Organizations must ensure a concrete and effective work-life balance policy which meets the need of both organization as well as individual. If organizations don’t have proper policies related with work life than it will increase attrition rate, dissatisfaction among employees and unproductivity. Creating work-life balance policies is not sufficient; organizations need to encourage employees to get benefited by these policies which will create the positive work culture. They should conduct some training programmes and workshops to make them learn about their emotions better which improves their decision making. Organizational commitment depends on the state of mind of the employees and their perfect balance of emotions and intelligence which affect their decision-making process.

Scope for Further Research

The study is still in process and there is lot of scope related with the variables affecting the work-life balance in case of females. There is always a room for improvement and this research is not an exception. Hence, the results of the study can vary in a bigger or lesser sample size. The results will also vary if the types of respondents change. In future other areas will also be included. The study can also be done in different states, pan India or on international basis.

References

1. Agarwalla, S., Seshadri, B. and Krishnan, V.R., 2015. Impact of Guna s and Karma Yoga on Transformational Leadership. Journal of Human Values, 21(1), pp.11-22.
2. Bakshi, S. and Vyas, V., 2015. Emerging trends of green work life balance. Chakraborty, S.K., 1987. Managerial effectiveness and quality of worklife: Indian insights. Tata McGraw Hill.
3. Chin, W.W., 1998. The partial least squares approach to structural equation modeling. Modern methods for business research, 295(2), pp.295-336.
4. F. Hair Jr, J., Sarstedt, M., Hopkins, L. and G. Kuppelwieser, V., 2014. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) An emerging tool in business research. European Business Review, 26(2), pp.106-121.
5. Gupta, S., 2016. Emotional intelligence and work life balance of employees in the information technology industry. Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, 6(3), p.201.
6. Kewalramani, S. and Rastogi, M.R., 2009. Emotional Intelligence and TriGuna.
7. Moh’d Abu Bakir, S., 2018. The Impact of Managers’ Emotional Intelligence on Employees’ Work Life Balance: A Field Study at Jordanian Private Hospitals. European Scientific Journal, SJ, 14(25), p.256.
8. Peter, A.J., Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Work Life Balance–A Global Perspective* Janet Bina Money.
9. Ravikumar, T., 2014. Emotional Intelligence and Work Life Balance of Women IT Professionals in Bangalore. Adarsh Journal of Management Research, 7(2), pp.19-31.
10. Shylaja, P. and Prasad, C.J., 2017. Emotional intelligence and work life balance. Journal of Business and Management, 19(19), pp.18-21.
11. Sastry, A.M., 1979. The Bhagavad gita: With the commentary of Sri Sankaracharya. Samata Books.
12. Shelar, S., 201.6 Conceptual Study of Relationship between Emotional Intelligence & Work Life Balance in Corporate World.
13. Salovey, P. and Mayer, J.D., 1990. Emotional intelligence. Imagination, cognition and personality, 9(3), pp.185-211.
14. Sarstedt, M., Ringle, C.M. and Hair, J.F., 2017. Partial least squares structural equation modeling. In Handbook of market research (pp. 1-40). Springer International Publishing.