Emotional intelligence amongst undergraduate students at a higher education institution

Abstract

Emotional Intelligence amongst undergraduate university students at a Higher Education Institution in the Western Cape Globalisation has brought increased complexity to employers. In these firms service and value for money are mostly delivered through decentralised organisational models. Midlevel managers and frontline staff have become more empowered. Therefore, employers increasingly judge graduate quality by conceptual, operational and especially emotional competencies. Gardner (1983; 1991) reported that business-related graduate programmes focused primarily on indicators of individual competence such as logical and linguistic intelligence, with less attention being given to spatial, interpersonal and naturalist forms of intelligence. Later research reported increased calls from industry to make curricula more relevant to `today's global workplace' through improved instruction in communication, leadership, as well as intrapersonal and interpersonal skills (Cherniss 1999; Doria, Rozanski and Cohen, 2003; Jaeger 2003; Myers and Tucker 2005). Lately, Daniel Goleman's research on emotional intelligence as a predictor of work performance has emerged (Goleman 1998, 2000; Weisinger, 1998) and continues to be highly influential.