To better understand the effect of emotions on formal and informal interactions in the workplace, I focus on emotional dynamics, the exchange and experience of emotions occurring within repeated interpersonal interactions. Emotional Ability (EA; how individuals perceive, use, understand, and manage their own or others’ emotions) is a key component in emotional dynamics. Specifically, I focus on the role of EA on individuals’ choices of coworkers for gaining emotional support (the receipt of empathy, caring, trust, and concern), and in turn, their occupational well-being and task performance. In addition, I investigate the “ripple effects” of EA, how the EA of focal actors may benefit others in the network. The value of Emotional Ability is thus in reaching beyond the individual’s(ego’s) benefit to extend to others (alters) who are tied to ego, in turn benefiting the entire social network (group of actors) and ultimately contributing to the organization’s emotional health. I further investigate possible moderators of the EA-benefits relationship: relationship perceived emotional competence (as assessed by others), emotional self-efficacy (individuals’ beliefs in their own EA) and empathic concern (propensity to experience feelings of warmth, compassion and concern for others). This study is part of a larger research agenda to develop an affective relational theory (ART) to examine how emotional dynamics affect relational dynamics in organizations.

Recent developments in emotion and EI research have introduced new ways of measuring emotional abilities, including performance based tests. The current study aimed to examine the associations of three emotional abilities, using three objective measures. The study consisted of a survey and an experiment, where 89 participants completed performance based multimodal emotion recognition and emotion understanding tests, and a conditioning task using social aversive and appetitive stimuli. The results showed that individuals who are more proficient in emotion understanding were more accurate in emotion recognition and more effective in extinguishing fear-evoking responses. In addition, individuals proficient in emotion recognition were shown to have stronger general responding during fear acquisition. Furthermore, various findings related to emotion understanding and emotion recognition modalities, including item difficulty and specific emotions. Implications of current findings support the notion of separate but related emotional abilities while also highlighting a potentially underlying mechanism or core emotional competence.

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Die Arbeit gliedert sich in fünf Teile. An ein Überblickskapitel, in welchem aktuelle Modelle und Verfahren zur Erfassung Emotionaler Intelligenz vorgestellt werden, schließen sich drei empirische Studien (englischsprachig) an. In diesen werden Zusammenhänge von Fähigkeitstests und Selbstberichtverfahren zur Erfassung emotionaler Fähigkeiten in Bezug auf sozial relevante Faktoren wie Lebenszufriedenheit, Konfliktlösefähigkeiten und Freundschaft untersucht. Darüber hinaus wird geprüft, inwieweit sich Patienten verschiedener Störungsbilder von einer psychisch gesunden Kontrollgruppe als auch untereinander in ihren gezeigten emotionalen Fähigkeiten unterscheiden. Die Arbeit endet mit einer Integration der Ergebnisse dieser drei Studien. Insbesondere wird dabei auf die Probleme aktueller Verfahren zur Erfassung Emotionaler Intelligenz mittels Selbstbericht und Fähigkeitstest eingegangen. Aufgrund der konzeptionellen Nähe von Sozialer Intelligenz und Emotionaler Intelligenz werden mögliche Integrationspunkte dieser beiden Forschungsfelder benannt. Ebenso werden mögliche alternative Erfassungsmethoden aufgezeigt. / This dissertation is devided into five parts. An introductory chapter explains actual self-report questionnaires and ability tests to assess emotional intelligence. The following three chapters present empirical data looking at relations between self-report measures and ability tests and important variables of social functioning like life satisfaction, conflict-management abilities, and friendship. Moreover, in another study we looked at differences between and within inpatients with different kinds of mental disorders and a clinically healthy control group. The final chapter integrates findings and conclusions focusing on the problems assessing emotional intelligence with self-report questionnaires and ability tests. As social intelligence and emotional intelligence are conceptionally related possible areas of collaborative work are discussed. Furthermore, alternative ways of assessing emotional abilities are highlighted.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’identifier les compétences interculturelles qui déterminent la disposition des gestionnaires au changement organisationnel. Pour ce faire, nous avons analysé l’influence des compétences interculturelles, impliquant des aptitudes cognitives, des habiletés émotives et des compétences comportementales/sociales chez les gestionnaires, sur la disposition au changement. Afin de tester notre modèle de recherche, incluant douze hypothèses principales nous avons eu recours à une enquête avec un questionnaire électronique auto-administré. Notre échantillon total compte cinq cent cinquante- sept personnes en provenance de soixante-huit pays différents. Les personnes interrogées, des salariés d’entreprises, occupent des postes à différents niveaux hiérarchiques : au niveau stratégique, mais aussi au niveau opérationnel, c’est-à- dire, des gestionnaires qui sont responsables de la planification à long terme, du contrôle du progrès, ou de la supervision quotidienne des opérations. La compréhension du concept de la compétence interculturelle était un aspect essentiel dans cette thèse de doctorat. La partie théorique a donc été écrite discrétionnairement par le chercheur au sujet des références choisies sur lesquelles le cadre conceptuel a été établi. Une partie empirique a été soutenue avec une analyse méthodologique quantitative afin de prouver qu’il y a une corrélation positive significative entre la compétence interculturelle et la disposition des gestionnaires au changement organisationnel. / The object of this thesis is to discover the intercultural competencies that determine manager’s readiness for organizational change. Through the analysis of twelve main hypotheses; regarded as intercultural competence; involving cognitive capabilities, emotional abilities and behavioural/social skills in managers; and their influence on readiness for change, the procedure to validate the general hypothesis includes an electronic self-administered questionnaire and a total of five hundred and fifty seven respondents from sixty-eight different nationalities. The respondents are managers of corporations who hold strategic, tactical or operational management positions; that is, managers who are responsible for long-term planning, progress monitoring, or day-to-day operational supervision.The understanding of the concept of intercultural competence is a central aspect in this dissertation and therefore the theoretical part has been written discretionarily by the researcher concerning the selected references upon which the conceptual framework was built. An empirical part is supported with a quantitative methodological analysis in order to prove that there is a significant positive correlation between intercultural competence and managers’ readiness for organizational change.

Die Arbeit gliedert sich in fünf Teile. An ein Überblickskapitel, in welchem aktuelle Modelle und Verfahren zur Erfassung Emotionaler Intelligenz vorgestellt werden, schließen sich drei empirische Studien (englischsprachig) an. In diesen werden Zusammenhänge von Fähigkeitstests und Selbstberichtverfahren zur Erfassung emotionaler Fähigkeiten in Bezug auf sozial relevante Faktoren wie Lebenszufriedenheit, Konfliktlösefähigkeiten und Freundschaft untersucht. Darüber hinaus wird geprüft, inwieweit sich Patienten verschiedener Störungsbilder von einer psychisch gesunden Kontrollgruppe als auch untereinander in ihren gezeigten emotionalen Fähigkeiten unterscheiden. Die Arbeit endet mit einer Integration der Ergebnisse dieser drei Studien. Insbesondere wird dabei auf die Probleme aktueller Verfahren zur Erfassung Emotionaler Intelligenz mittels Selbstbericht und Fähigkeitstest eingegangen. Aufgrund der konzeptionellen Nähe von Sozialer Intelligenz und Emotionaler Intelligenz werden mögliche Integrationspunkte dieser beiden Forschungsfelder benannt. Ebenso werden mögliche alternative Erfassungsmethoden aufgezeigt. / This dissertation is devided into five parts. An introductory chapter explains actual self-report questionnaires and ability tests to assess emotional intelligence. The following three chapters present empirical data looking at relations between self-report measures and ability tests and important variables of social functioning like life satisfaction, conflict-management abilities, and friendship. Moreover, in another study we looked at differences between and within inpatients with different kinds of mental disorders and a clinically healthy control group. The final chapter integrates findings and conclusions focusing on the problems assessing emotional intelligence with self-report questionnaires and ability tests. As social intelligence and emotional intelligence are conceptionally related possible areas of collaborative work are discussed. Furthermore, alternative ways of assessing emotional abilities are highlighted.