Workforce agility and its links to emotional intelligence and workforce performance: A study of small entrepreneurial firms in India

Abstract

Small businesses play a crucial role in the economy; however, small entrepreneurial firms often lack expertise and resources, meaning that it is challenging to run such businesses successfully. Using data from a survey of six small entrepreneurial firms in India, this research sets out to explore the relationship between workforce performance and emotional intelligence, looking in particular at the role that workforce agility plays. Workplace performance is split into three categories; task performance, adaptive performance, and contextual performance. Our results show that workforce agility acts as a mediator between emotional intelligence and work performance, but only in relation to adaptive and contextual performance; it does not have any significant influence on task performance. Against the backdrop of a volatile and uncertain business environment, we conclude by drawing a number of inferences from our work that small entrepreneurial firms could use to improve employee productivity and performance.

The Influence of Internal Marketing and Job Satisfaction on Task Performance and Counterproductive Work Behavior in an Emerging Market during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…An employee’s individual performance is touched on from the perspective of three dimensions, namely task performance, contextual performance, and counterproductive work behavior [ 97 , 98 ]. This approach has been highly debated in the literature [ 90 , 99 , 100 ], studies offering a multidimensional perspective on the way employees perceive their own performance or display counterproductive behaviors [ 97 , 98 ]. As intriguing as the analysis of counterproductive work behavior regarding employees’ individual performance may seem, its consideration is entirely justified because, if performance expresses efficiency, then counterproductivity expresses the opposite, namely employees’ inefficiency to handle the tasks and/or the duties, namely the workload.…”

“…Employee’s task fulfillment performance is of paramount importance to human resource management within an organization because it is linked to the efficiency of the entire activity [ 100 ]. Fundamentally, it is an accumulation of employee results, such as proper task planning so that tasks are completed on time, orientation towards result maximization and effort minimization, prioritization of important tasks over less important ones, and their efficient completion with minimal time and effort [ 97 , 98 ].…”

How can employees adapt to change? Clarifying the adaptive performance concepts

“…In particular, scholars have focused on developing the features of agile, multiskilled, and cross‐trained employees and improving their performance in information technology‐related areas (Breu et al, 2002; Hopp, Iravani, & Van Oyen, 2004; van Oyen, Gel, & Hopp, 2001). Recently, workforce agility has also been examined in relation to psychological factors such as workplace spirituality and emotional intelligence (Paul, Jena, & Sahoo, 2020; Varshney & Varshney, 2020).…”

“…The purpose of this study is to investigate, compare, and clarify the six concepts (adaptive performance, proactivity, resilience, role flexibility, workforce agility, and learning agility) related to employees' ability to adapt to new and changing work situations in organizations. The motivation of this study started from the fact that many scholars have emphasized the importance of employees' ability and behavior to anticipate new challenges and to adapt to the changes (Braun, Hayes, & DeMuth, 2017; Varshney & Varshney, 2020). Scholars have emphasized some aspects of these employees' ability to change based on the employees' focus and perspectives by describing a specific ability or comparing two related concepts (e.g., Braun et al, 2017; Griffin, Parker, & Mason, 2010).…”

Workforce agility: a systematic literature review and a research agenda proposal

“…In the political-economic scenario of today's capitalist society, companies are increasingly operating under global competition and market dynamics based on uncertainties, unpredictability, and constant and fast-paced changes with direct and indirect impact on their activities (Munteanu et al, 2020;Teece et al, 2016;Varshney & Varshney, 2020).…”