The relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Citizenship Behavior (Testing the Mediating Effect of Job Satisfaction)

Purpose - The study tested the extent to which the emotional intelligence (EI), job satisfaction (JS) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and their dimensions are related. Alsoit was tested that whether job satisfaction mediates personality effects (Emotional Intelligence) on organizational citizenship behavior. method - A questionnaire survey was carried out to explore these relations at the Islamic Azad University of Tehran, South Branch. Participants were 187 employees who completed the Wong Law Emotional Intelligence Scale, Blazer Job Satisfaction Scale and Podsakoff Organizational citizenship behavior Scale. Some basic socio-demographic questions were included too.  Finding - Results indicated that emotional intelligence affects both job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior; and job satisfaction affects organizational citizenship behavior significantly. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), it was cleared that job satisfaction mediates the effects of emotional intelligence on organizational citizenship behavior partially. Among the four EI dimensions, "self-emotional aPPraisal", "other’s emotional aPPraisal" and "use of emotion" were significant independent predictors of job satisfaction and all the four EI dimensions were significant independent predictors of OCB. Originality/value - The relations among emotional intelligence, job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior have been analyzed simultaneously. Job satisfaction was found to be a mediator between emotional intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior. Emotional intelligence dimensions have significant relation with some aspects of job satisfaction and some dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior.