Exploring Emotional Intelligence Trait Enablers for Knowledge Sharing: An Empirical Study

Purpose: The presented paper aims to reveal the relationship between emotional intelligence and knowledge sharing of employees of Hungarian organisations. Furthermore, the emphasis is placed on identifying the specific emotional intelligence traits which enable knowledge sharing.Design/methodology/approach: The database includes 215 full questionnaires collected via LimeSurvey system. The research has applied quantitative methodology. After the Hungarian validation of TEIQUe (Petrides, 2009) emotional intelligence measurement and Kankanhalli’s Knowledge Sharing scale (Kankanhalli et al., 2005), correlation analyses have been adopted to test the hypotheses.Findings: Significant positive relationship can be identified between employees’ emotional intelligence and knowledge sharing behaviour. Well-being, emotionality, self-control and sociability as emotional intelligence factors show relation to altruism, loss of knowledge and reputation. Among individual factors, differences can be identified regarding generation and position, while gender and education do not seem to play a significant role in this relationship. Regarding organisational characteristics, differences can be detected according to the size of the organisation.Practical implications: The outcome of the research can help companies, managers and HR specialists to learn how to trigger knowledge sharing behaviour according to gender and position while taking the size of the organisation into consideration.Original value: The original value of the research is that specific emotional intelligence traits have been identified to detect knowledge sharing behaviour regarding individual and organisational characteristics. The presented paper has been the first study t