Study of the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Management Decision Making Styles

This study deals with clarifying the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and decision making styles (rational, intuitive, dependant, spontaneous and avoidant) of managers in Iranian oil industry. A collection of 55 managers were tested.Emotional intelligence was measured by an EI questionnaire and Scott and Bruce’s decision making style questionnaire was used for measuring decision making styles of managers. A number of managerial professionals considered and accepted content validity of emotional intelligence and decision making style questionnaires. Test of Alpha-Cronbach ( = 0.71 for decision making style questionnaire) and ( = 0.82 for emotional intelligence questionnaire) indicated that reliability of these questionnaires are accepted too. Because all the variables are in normal form, Pearson correlation was taken to test the relationship between emotional intelligence and each of the decision making styles. Analyzing data results revealed that there are negative meaningful relationship between emotional intelligence and each of rational and avoidant decision making styles and there is a positive meaningful relationship between emotional intelligence and intuitive decision making style of managers. This study didn’t find any meaningful relationship between emotional intelligence and each of dependant and spontaneous decision making styles of managers. By using Logistic Regression, predictor models of accepted hypothesis are also presented.