Politics perception and satisfaction among school teachers: the moderating role of emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence has become a fundamental construct in recent management researches. However, no detailed study available that investigate the effect of Emotional intelligence (EI) on the influence of perceived organizational politics on work outcomes of teachers. This study fills this gap by investigating the moderating role of EI on the relationship between perceived organizational politics and satisfaction among school teachers. The study was conducted with 276 school teachers in the northern part of Sri Lanka, and the data were analyzed employing appropriate statistical tools. This study explored that perceived organizational politics had a significant and negative impact on satisfaction among school teachers. Also, this study disclosed that EI moderates the relationship between perceived organizational politics and satisfaction. The results show that higher EI levels lead to a weaker relationship between politics and satisfaction, while lower levels of EI leads to a stronger relationship between politics and satisfaction. This study contributes to both theory and practice by investigating the influence of organizational politics on satisfaction among school teachers in Sri Lankan context which is a group ignored in the previous studies and introducing teachers' EI as moderating variable in the said relationship.