The Influence of Emotional Intelligence on Work Motivation. An Empirical Assessment

The paper investigated the association between emotional intelligence and work motivation among employees of organisations to determine whether emotional intelligence differences exist in work motivation, and to assess the nature of the association between emotional intelligence and work motivation. A sample of 140 respondents was selected through the convenience sample method for the primary data collection. A set of questionnaires developed by the researcher was used to collect data from the respondents. Data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics, and presented in Tables. The results indicate respondents are emotionally intelligent and are also motivated. The research findings also indicate emotional intelligence differences exist in work motivation. It is recommended that improvement in skills in the emotional intelligence of employees will contribute positively to work motivational levels, and organisation’s productivity, and growth. Organisations should, therefore, thrive to identify factors that improve the work motivation of employees.


Introduction
Empirical research in the area of emotional intelligence and motivation continues to receive attention in the literature because of job outcomes in employees in organisations. The management of organisations is keen on increasing job productivity to ensure sustainable growth of the organisations by ensuring improvement in the motivation and satisfaction levels. A well-motivated employee is an important asset in an organisation because of job outcomes. Emotional intelligence is thought to play a significant role in the motivation of employees' actions and behaviours (Young et  According to researchers such as Pope and Singer (1990), and Salovey and Mayer (1990), emotional intelligence is a kind of relational intelligence that entails the capability to track the emotions and feelings of others as well as the individual own emotions and feelings, and further leads an individual to think and act. Motivation according to researchers (Kanfer, 2009;Kanfer et al., 2017) may be explained as a psychological power that initiates complicated procedures of goal-oriented ideas and actions. The procedure turns round the external environmental forces and the individual's internal psychological forces, and regulate the path, depth, and continual individual behaviour directed at a particular goal. Work motivation may be explained as a set of aggressive forces that arise inside an individual and their work environment, to begin workrelated actions and their nature, orientation, strength, and period (Latham & Pinder, 2005;Pinder, 2008). The review of the literature indicates little empirical works on the association between emotional intelligence and work motivation (Magnano et al., 2016). In the knowledge of the researchers, no known empirical work exists on the current topic in the study area. The study fills this literature gap, in adding to the literature. The goal of the present article is to explore empirically the connection between emotional intelligence and work motivation of employees to ascertain whether emotional intelligence differences exist in the work motivation of employees in organisations. The paper specifically (i) assesses the differences that EM-2021EM- -2612 exist between emotional intelligence and work motivation; (ii) determines the correlation between emotional intelligence and work motivation. The propositions for the research are that (1) emotional intelligence differences exist in work motivation; (2) employees' emotional intelligence level is associated with their motivational level. The research answers the following questions are; (a) Does emotional intelligence differences exist in work motivation? (b) which emotional intelligence dimension influence employees' work motivation? (c) what is the nature of the relationship between emotional intelligence and work motivation of employees? The research is not without challenges. Some respondents might have been economical with the information provided. Causal conclusions are also not appropriate based on the findings of the study since the causal analysis was not the focus of the study. Future research on causal studies using experimental design, and structural modelling will be an improvement on the current research. Further research including control variables such as age, gender, and educational level is worth embarking on to determine whether the findings of the current research will be replicated. A comparative assessment on the present topic involving the private and public organisations is worth embarking on. The rest of the article looks at the research methodology, results, discussions, and conclusions of the paper.

Review of Related Literature
There are few empirical works on the link between emotional intelligence and work motivation in the empirical literature, though many works are explaining the two variables separately. The findings are found in the works of researchers such as (Othman et al., 2009;Saad, 2011;Atiq et al., 2015;Yang et al., 2015). For example, Christie et al. (2007) explored whether motivation is related to emotional intelligence in their study. Their research findings indicated that motivation is significantly related to the emotional intelligence of the respondents in the study, but not part of emotional intelligence constructs. Saad (2011) examined the effect of emotional intelligence on work motivation and reported that emotional intelligence is positively significantly associated with work motivation and the that changes in work motivation are highly explained by emotional intelligence. Roy et al. (2013) researched the tie between emotional intelligence and motivation among students and reported that in the study significant positive relationships exist between motivation and emotional intelligence and stated that emotional differences exist in respondents' motivation levels in the study. Hassanzadeh and Kafaki (2014) analysed the association between emotional intelligence and work motivation among workers and reported a significant linear link between the two variables as well as between the dimensions of emotional intelligence and the variables of motivation in the study. This research is of interest for focusing on the dimensions and the motivational variables in addition. Ateş & Buluc (2015) examined the connection between emotional intelligence and work motivation and reported a significant feedback link between the two variables. That is, emotional intelligent causes work motivation and work motivation also causes emotional intelligence. Their research is fascinating because, the analysis is causal, and not only descriptive. In contributing to the debate, Atiq et al. (2015) analysed the link between emotional intelligence and work motivation. Their research findings revealed a positive significant link between emotional intelligence and work motivation. Yang et al. (2015) in a similar study investigated the association between emotional intelligence and produced results in support of a significant positive relationship between emotional intelligence and work motivation. Both intrinsic and extrinsic work motivation were examined in the study. Levitats and Vigoda-Gadot (2017) assessed the influence of emotional intelligence in motivation in survey research and reported that in their study significant positive link exists between motivation and emotional intelligence. They indicated that the relationship is linear. Their research departs from other previous works by examining direct and indirect links in the models estimated. Gorji et al. (2017) explored the association between emotional intelligence and job motivation are indicated that there is a significant positive effect of overall emotional intelligence on overall job motivation as well as on the variables of job motivation examined in their study. Their study is also intriguing for considering both the over job motivation as well as the variables. Phillips (2018) indicated in a study that works motivation is a function of emotional intelligence. In their empirical study on the relationship between emotional intelligence and work motivation, the research findings indicated a significant effect of emotional intelligence on motivation. The study stated that respondents were more motivated when they have considerable awareness of other individuals' emotions. In recent times, Bimayu et al. (2020) studied the effect of emotional intelligence on motivation and indicated that emotional intelligence has a significant positive link with motivation in their study. Mukokoma (2020) in related research explored the correlation between emotional intelligence and work motivation and reported a significant feedback relationship between work motivation and emotional intelligence. The study is of interest for considering both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the analysis.

Research Methodology 3.1 Research Design/Strategy/Type
The study employs a quantitative research design to quantify the association between emotional intelligence and work motivation. Quantitative analysis allows for objective analysis and affords the research findings and conclusions higher external validity. The study is descriptive in analysis. Hence, the link between emotional intelligence and work motivation is described in the study. Emotional intelligence dimensions and work motivation variables are identified and classified in the study. Also, the research is cross-sectional since the research is population-based, hence, data was collected from the respondents and analysed once. Cross-sectional research allows for faster and less expensive research to be conducted, unlike longitudinal research.

Target Population/Sample size/Sample selection method
The employees of both public and private institutions in Sunyani Township are the study population. The research sample size is 140. The respondents were sampled using the convivence sample method since there was difficulty in contacting respondents and also there is no existing sample frame.

Data
Primary and secondary data were used in the study. Secondary data were collected from journal articles and books which were retrieved from electronic sources. Primary data which are the data obtained from the respondents were collected using the self-designed questionnaire and were administered by the researchers and research assistants. The questionnaire was in two parts, section A and section B. Section A contains the demographic factors, whereas section B contains the subject items. The five-point Likert scale format was used to design the questionnaire. Since the items were all positive, the order of coding was as follows; strongly disagree=1; disagree=2; neutral=3; agree=4; and strongly agree=5. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics such as mean, and standard deviation, and inferential statistics such as regression, Pearson correlation, and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). SPSS version 26 was employed. Results were exhibited in Tables results.

Theoretical and Conceptual Framework
The study on emotional intelligence is based on the theories proposed by Bar-On (1997), Salovey and Mayer (1990) and Mayer and Salovey (1997), Goleman (2001), Petrides, et al. (2007), and Ugoani et al. (2015). According to Salovey and Mayer (1990), emotional intelligence is the capacity that allows an individual to perceive, investigate, and recognise his/her and other individuals emotions and feelings to influence ideas and conducts. The paper on motivation is based on the self-determination theory which has two parts which are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation ( Legault, 2016). According to these authors, intrinsic motivation operates internally to drive an individual to act or embark on an action, such as an individual feeling of accomplishment and working out of the excitement. Extrinsic motivation operates externally and not from within the individual. A worker who is motivated to work by the organisation, the job itself, and the worker's environment. Examples are a reward system, financial needs, influence of peer, social, and cultural norms. Extrinsic motivation, therefore, is a motivation resulting from the satisfaction of the activity of the job and not the job itself. According to Salovey and Mayer (1990) Table 1 indicates the demographic characteristics of the study respondents. The results indicate females are the majority (58%) respondents; the majority (39%) are in the age group of 30-39 years. Also, the majority (62%) hold a first degree/diploma certificate. In addition, the majority (44%) are in the senior member level; with most (33%) having worked between 3-5years. On the marital status, the majority (51%) are married.

Dimensionality Test Results
The dimensionality test results performed to determine the dimensions of uni-dimensional or multidimensional as shown in Table 3 and Table 4 show multidimensionality of the scales because 4 components and 3 components explain about 72% (Table 3) and 72% (Table 4) of the variance in the components using the initial Eigenvalues respectively. In all, 4 components and 3 components were extracted in Table 3 and Table 4 respectively. Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests were used to examine the status of normality. Table 5, Table 6,  Table 7, and Table 8 exhibit the results. The results show the data set is not normally distributed, since the significance values of the test are not more than 0.05.

Results of One-Way ANOVA
The results of One-Way ANOVA on the relationship between emotional intelligence and work motivation studied are exhibited in Table 9, Table 10, Table 11, Table 12, and Table 13. The results of the relationship between the overall emotional intelligence dimensions scales and work motivation variables as exhibited in Table 9, show a significant difference between emotional intelligence dimensions scales and work motivation variables (F=2.934; P=0.000). In Table 10, to Table 13 results show a significant effect of the four emotional intelligence dimensions on work motivation at 1% significance. The findings imply that overall emotional intelligence and the dimensions significantly influence work motivation. In Table 14

Correlation Results on Work Motivation and Emotional Intelligence
The correlation results on the link between work motivation and overall emotional intelligence are exhibited in Table 15. The results show a significant positive link between work motivation and emotional intelligence. The effect of emotional intelligence dimension scales on work motivation are shown in Table  16. The results indicate three scales of dimension (Management of own emotions; awareness of others' emotions; management of others' emotions are positively associated with work motivation.

Regression Results on Emotional Intelligence and Work Motivation
The regression results on the relationship between work motivation and emotional intelligence are exhibited in Table 17 and Table 18. The results in Table 17 show there is a significant positive effect of awareness of others' emotions scale dimension on work motivation at the 1% level of significance. The results indicate that when awareness of others' emotions increases by 1%, work motivation increase by about 27%. The results in Table 18 consider the association between overall emotional intelligence and work motivation. The results show a significant positive association between emotional intelligence and work motivation at the 1% significance level. The results show that when emotional intelligence increase by 1%, work motivation increase about 55%.

Discussions
The research tried to contribute to knowledge concerning the role of emotions in an organisation by testing the linear relationship between work motivation and emotional intelligence. One of the main contributions is reconfirming that the emotional intelligence of employees adds to the explanation of work motivation, and commitment. One of the central components of the job of public workers is emotional labour. A significant finding of the research is the linear positive association between emotional intelligence and work motivation. These research findings augment the few research efforts that researched emotional intelligence and work motivation. Though the study is not causal research, and as such conclusion on causality is not appropriate, the researcher considers the finding of a positive association between the two variables as suggestive of the advantage emotional intelligence has in supplementing workers motivation. It looks more probably that emotional intelligence is a dispositional factor that precedes motivation; hence it is a motivational variable.

Conclusions
In the study the connection between emotional intelligence and work motivation has been examined empirically, using ANOVA, correlation and regression analysis. The study has explained that emotional intelligence is associated with work motivation. The findings contribute to motivation through emotional intelligence. The findings imply that, when the emotions of workers are low and unstable, they are not motivated to work, and will not be committed to their job. In that case, work outcomes may suffer. The findings indicate that emotional intelligence can increase the work motivation level of employees. Hence, improvement in skills in emotional intelligence will contribute positively to work motivational levels, and organisation's productivity, and growth. Organisations should, therefore, thrive to identify factors that improve the work motivation of employees.