Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Career Decision-Making of Management Undergraduates

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of emotional intelligence on career decision-making. In addition to that, this study intended to contribute to fill the literature gap by looking into the relation between emotional intelligence and career decision-making. Although the associations between emotional intelligence and career decision-making are well established in western literature, few studies have examined the five dimensions of Goleman model of emotional intelligence such as self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy & social skills with career decision making in the Sri Lankan context, especially in the Management undergraduates in state universities. Hence this was a quantitative and cross-sectional research study. The sample is selected using simple random sampling technique. Primary data were collected through a standard questionnaire distributed via Google form. Questionnaires were distributed to a sample of 280 Management undergraduates in the Sri Lankan state universities. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS. To interpret data graphical charts, descriptive statistics, histograms, correlation analysis and regression were used. Simple regression analysis and Pearson correlation were used to test the study hypotheses. Analyzed results showed a positive impact of emotional intelligence on career decision-making. Further, five dimensions of emotional intelligence; self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills had strong positive relationship with career decision-making. The study results clearly underlined that the undergraduates could improve their career decision making through their emotional intelligence. The present study would provide the direction to HR managers, HR policy makers, career counselors, undergraduates and for future researchers.