BIG FIVE TRAITS AS A PREDICTOR OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AMONG THE FRONTLINE HOTEL WORKERS

Researchers have devoted sufficient time to explore various organizational and individual factors that influence employee behavior and consequently determine employee performance. Personality is one such variable which has been studied in great detail. The new addition to the researched variables is emotional intelligence. Researchers have been working to explore the influence that emotional intelligence has on human behavior and its links with employee performance. Personality and emotional intelligence have been studied together to assess the influence the two variables have on employee behavior. Most of these studies have been conducted in a western context. To bridge this research gap, the present study was conducted with the main aim to examine the link between big five personality traits (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness). An attempt was made to ascertain the role of personality traits in determining emotional intelligence. Data was collected from 240 frontline hotel workers in the Kashmir region out of which 150 were males(n=150) and 90 were females (n=90). The findings of the study are expected to be useful to the service sector, especially the hospitality sector.