Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. COVID-19 has affected educational systems worldwide, leading to the widespread closure of schools, colleges and universities. The COVID-19 pandemic is also having a dramatic impact on societies and economies around the world. With various measures of lockdowns and social distancing in place, it becomes important to understand emotional intelligence of faculty members working in institutions of higher learning on a large scale in this pandemic. Aim: The purpose of this article is to examine the perception of faculty members toward their emotional intelligence during COVID-19 and to study the impact of demographic variables on their emotional intelligence. Method: The data collected were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The data for the study were collected through both the primary and secondary sources. Online questionnaires were used to gather the primary data. The measuring items used for the study were sourced from existing validated scales and literature. Descriptive statistics was employed to know the descriptive information across various demographic variables on a total sample of 683. The various demographic variables, which were considered for the study, were gender and designation. Results: The results revealed that the faculty members perceived their emotional intelligence at an above-average level in the present pandemic, that is, COVID-19. The results also revealed that the perception of the respondent faculty members toward their emotional intelligence from different universities and states is more or less the same and also the demographic variable gender has a significant impact on emotional intelligence during the present pandemic. Conclusion: Besides having theoretical implications that open pathways for conducting further research, the findings of the study may serve as a reference for service practitioners in designing strategies that will ensure superior performance of faculty members in higher educational institutions during the pandemic.

Academic leaders have a very important role to play in higher educational institutions, and for the development of academic leaders attention has to be paid to their emotional intelligence to ensure transformational leadership and effective decision-making in their institution. There are few issues which are faced by all the academic leaders due to multiple roles, attitude, behaviour and emotions related to job/role. This is because with the passage of time, the roles of academic leaders have also changed. In the present study, the focus is on transformational leadership style of academic leaders as it is more prevalent in the higher education sector. In light of the findings of the empirical studies conducted on the subject, the present study is conducted in higher education sector with the objectives to examine the state of emotional intelligence and transformational leadership among academic leaders, to examine association between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership among the academic leaders under study, to study the association of various demographic factors of faculty members on their perception regarding emotional intelligence and transformational leadership. The present study is exploratory cum descriptive in nature. The data were collected from full-time faculty members working in selected universities of north India and their perception regarding emotional intelligence and transformational leadership of their academic leaders was measured. It was found that there is a significant and direct association between emotional intelligence of leaders and transformational leadership style as perceived by the faculty members. The demographic variables (gender and age) were found to significantly influence the variables under study as perceived by the faculty members about their academic leaders (HODs). Besides having theoretical implications that open pathways for conducting further research, the findings of the study may serve as a reference for service practitioners in designing strategies that will ensure superior performance of academic leaders in higher educational institutions.

Cognition and affect have had stretched history of influencing the buying behaviour of an individual. The change in one of the dimensions leads to some proportionate change in corresponding factor, and a number of research studies have been carried out to ascertain the role of cognition and affect in consumer decision making. But most of the studies lack the evidence of scientific reliability and validity and nature of itemization in previous scales/papers has not been comprehensive as well. In the current endeavour, application of exploratory factor analysis and structure equation modelling has significantly tested the reliability and validity measures needed for impulsive buying scale that would largely facilitate different stake holders. This paper explores the process for how highly reliable and valid indicators of cognition and affect have been developed. The research design employed was a mixture of both exploratory and descriptive approaches that assisted author in classifying factors along with underlying items. Structured questionnaire was employed for the collection of data from the respondents. For validation and development of the modified scale, a set of reliable and scientific tools were employed included. Overall findings revealed that the instrument is vastly consistent and possesses both discriminant and convergent validity. Additionally, other reliability forms are on higher side which sustains the reliability of the scale. The current study will have larger credibility for researchers in the area of organizational behaviour, consumer behaviour and in other interdisciplinary areas.

Academic leaders need to recognize their own emotions and know the feelings of those around them. Academic leaders are more effective when they pay attention to their social interactions with others in the workplace and the impact they as leaders have on those around them. It is also essential for leaders to recognize the influence that others’ emotions have on them. The purpose of this article is to examine the perception of faculty members towards emotional intelligence (EI) of their academic leaders in the sample select universities, and to study the impact of demographic variables on EI. The data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The data for the study were collected through both the primary and secondary sources. The measuring items used for the study were sourced from existing validated scales and literature. Descriptive statistics was employed to know the descriptive information across various demographic variables on a total sample of 719. The various demographic variables, which were considered for the study, were gender, age and experience. The results revealed that the faculty members of the sample select universities perceived the EI of their academic leaders at an above-average level; presently, they are fairly satisfied with their academic leader’s EI. The results also revealed that the perception of the respondent faculty members towards their HOD’s EI from different universities and states is more or less the same and also the demographic variables have a significant impact on EI. Besides having theoretical implications that open pathways for conducting further research, the findings of the study may serve as a reference for service practitioners in designing strategies that will ensure superior performance of academic leaders in higher educational institutions.

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