This study investigates whether emotional leadership theory may be applied to the military organization. In particular, this study examines whether there is a significant difference in the effect of emotional leadership on soldiers' job attitude again...
This study investigates whether emotional leadership theory may be applied to the military organization. In particular, this study examines whether there is a significant difference in the effect of emotional leadership on soldiers' job attitude against the effect on officers' job attitude in terms of job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
To achieve this end, literature review and empirical investigation was conducted in order. First, a comprehensive literature review on emotional intelligence, organizational behavior, and leadership was conducted to integrate the findings of prior studies and to establish a solid theoretical foundation for this study. Based on such theoretical investigation, the hypotheses and the theoretical model of this study was developed.
To test the hypotheses and the theoretical model of this study, a prototype survey was created by restructuring and applying the existing items. The prototype survey was refined through item screening and preliminary analysis to create a final version of the survey to be used for data collection. Collected data was processed through PASW18 statistical package to conduct frequency analysis, factor analysis, reliability analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and multiple linear regression analysis. In particular, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to test for significant differences in job satisfaction and organizational commitment according to group characteristics. In addition, multiple linear regression was conducted to test and compare the effect of leader's emotional intelligence on job attitude between the two different groups inside the military organization (i.e. soldiers and officers).
First, the relationship between leader's emotional intelligence and soldiers' job attitude was investigated. The findings suggest that all subcomponents of leader's emotional intelligence has statistically significant positive influence on soldiers' overall job satisfaction, the subcomponents of job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.
Second, the relationship between leader's emotional intelligence and officers' job attitude was examined. Similar to the findings on the relationship between leader's emotional intelligence and soldiers' job attitude, the findings for officers indicate that all subcomponents of leader's emotional intelligence has statistically significant positive influence on overall job satisfaction, the subcomponents of job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. For both soldiers and officers, leader's emotional intelligence has been found to have the largest influence on subordinates' leader satisfaction. In addition, leader's use of emotion has been found to have the largest influence on subordinates' job attitude among the subcomponents of emotional intelligence.
Third, the effect size of leader's emotional intelligence on the two military groups (i.e. soldiers and officers) was compared. The results suggest that leader's emotional intelligence has statistically stronger positive influence on soldiers' job attitude vis-á-vis that of officers.
Additional analysis was conducted to compare the effect size of leader's emotional intelligence on subordinates' job attitude with respect to their service period. The ANOVA results indicate that job satisfaction and organizational commitment of Private class soldiers under one year of service are more influenced by leader's emotional intelligence than Corporal and Sergeant class soldiers. As for officers, the influence of leader's emotional intelligence on officers' job satisfaction attenuated with every year of service, except for those beyond 30 years of service.
Through the findings, this study has shown that leader's emotional intelligence has positive influence on job satisfaction and organizational commitment of soldiers and officers. In particular, leader's emotional intelligence has been found to have the largest effect on soldiers, and especially those under one year of service. In addition, leader's emotional intelligence has been found to have larger effect on those officers with less than two years of service than those with longer service period.
The results of this study provides practical implications for policy reforms in the military organization. First, emotional leadership needs to be emphasized in the military via establishment of an emotional intelligence development policy. Second, systematic education on emotional intelligence should be prioritized and available to officers of various ranks. Third, a high level of emotional intelligence needs to be achieved in various sectors of the military organization so that emotional intelligence is used in problem solving and motivation inducement. Finally, an increase in combat power is expected in the military if emotional intelligence development policy is applied to human resources management, especially in the areas of personnel promotion and selection.
In particular, the analysis of variance has clearly shown the effectiveness of leader's emotional leadership on soldiers' job attitude. Taking into account that soldiers comprise above 70% of the total personnel inside the military organization, reduced accidents and enhanced service satisfaction is expected from developing leader's emotional intelligence.
Notwithstanding the findings, this study has limitations. This study looked into cross-sectional data among sampled military bases, and thus the findings have limited external validity for generalization across different time periods and across the entire military organization. In addition, there is a potential bias in the level of emotional intelligence received from the leaders via self- eport survey, which may enhance error variance. Moreover, items measuring emotional intelligence may not be compatible with the Korean culture and the military organization, and therefore suitable items needs to be developed.
Based on the limitations of this study, future studies are