Investigating the Moderating Role of Emotional Intelligence on The Relationship Between Innovation Capabilities and Academic Leadership Effectiveness

Today, higher education has undergone extensive changes and needs which greatly emphasize market forces. Innovation and adaptation to the changing external environment are among the challenges that universities face in the age of globalization. Therefore, the reliance of higher education institutes on traditional administrative and service processes can no longer guarantee the desired results. This is why higher education units are under intense pressure to increase possible flexibility and develop methods to better meet the needs of their customers. Considering the current expectations of society from universities, the main question is "do the emotional abilities of senior university managers (identifying, understanding, regulating, and managing the emotions of themselves and others) affect leadership effectiveness"? Therefore, the present study helps Iran's public higher education strategic planners to better understand the dimensions of emotional intelligence of their leaders and train these abilities and skills as superior leadership characteristics in management training programs. This study investigates the moderating effect of the emotional intelligence of academic leaders on the relationship between innovation capabilities and academic leadership effectiveness in 5 A-grade and public universities in Tehran city.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Researchers believe that social effectiveness skills are the determinants of leadership effectiveness. Some believe that leadership effectiveness refers to the actual performance of the team or the perception of the leader's effectiveness, while others refer to leadership effectiveness as the degree of adaptation between the leader's leadership style and environmental conditions. On the other hand, innovation capability has been defined as the skills and knowledge needed to effectively absorb, master, and improve existing technologies and create new possibilities. Emotional intelligence includes four abilities such as observation, evaluation, and accurate expression of emotions; facilitating the thoughts through access and production of thoughts; cognition of emotions and emotional knowledge and regulation of emotions that lead to intellectual development are introduced. Thus, emotional intelligence has been assumed as a key construct of social effectiveness and leadership effectiveness. Then, more emotionally intelligent leaders, when supporting their subordinates, can understand their emotional responses and help them understand and manage the challenges of change. Based on field and library studies of the researcher about the factors affecting the success of Iran's big public universities, as the heroes of the resistance to change, the role of emotional and perceptual abilities of leaders called emotional intelligence on leadership qualities and the effectiveness of academic leadership and facilitating and disseminating innovation in the higher education organization showed very colorful and influential. This caused the researcher to examine whether innovation capabilities affect the effectiveness of academic leadership. How influential is emotional intelligence in this relationship? Does the emotional intelligence of academic leaders act as a factor in moderating, reducing, or increasing the intensity of this relationship?

The statistical population of this study is the 217 senior managers working in 5 public universities including the University of Tehran, Sharif University of Technology, University of Allameh Tabatabai, University of Shahid Beheshti, and the Tarbiat Modares University. The latent components of the variables in the research conceptual model were identified through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 11 scholars working in those universities. Using a 6-step thematic analysis, 50 items were discovered in the form of 10 measurable components to be distributed in form of a survey questionnaire among the 150 sample managers. The confirmatory factor analysis was performed and confirmed to evaluate the reliability of the index using Cronbach's alpha, CR, and factor loadings, and AVE and Fornell and Larker's matrix to evaluate the validity of the index. The structural equation modeling (SEM) method based on the least partial squares (PLS) technique was used to test the quantitative research hypotheses.

Analyzing the research data indicated that the effect of innovation capabilities on leadership effectiveness was statistically significant. The direction of the effect is positive and the intensity of the relationship is 0.274, which indicates the average effect of innovation capabilities on leadership effectiveness. Testing the moderating impact of emotional intelligence in the second hypothesis using the interactive effect method in which the standard scores of the independent and moderator variables are multiplied and an interactive sentence is created, showed that emotional intelligence has a significant moderating role in the relationship between innovation capabilities and leadership effectiveness. In the second hypothesis, the intensity of the relationship was 0.078.

 CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

Recognizing the self and others' feelings and emotions, academic leaders can strengthen the innovative and creative thinking of their subordinates in academically challenging situations. Surely, applying these cognitive abilities innovates academic research and pedagogical processes and makes academic leadership effective and the dream of universities' social responsibility come true. As growing demand pressures, cultural shifts in higher education, managerial diversity, and financial constraints have forced higher education to change and adapt to new leadership practices, Policymakers in the ministry of sciences are suggested to innovate in research and pedagogical processes, encourage the academic staff to think about organizational processes and identify the current and future challenges higher education and research processes facing and to provide the creative and innovative ideas. In addition, they are suggested to apply the assessments of the leader's emotional intelligence and its benefits in changing the interpersonal behavior and managerial effectiveness in performance appraisal programs of the universities. Researchers and scholars are also advised to measure the emotional intelligence skill of innovative individuals in future research and to classify and rank the impact of these skills, as well as the extent to which emotional intelligence skills and ideation, and creativity are used among leaders with X and Y leadership styles.