Abstract:
Savings and credit co-operative societies (SACCOs) require committed employees if
they are to reverse the poor performance trends that they have been experiencing.
Employee commitment in the SACCOs cannot be left in anticipation that it will
occur naturally, despite the employee’s natural desire to perform and be rewarded for
it. This desire needs to be accommodated, facilitated and cultivated. SACCOs need
to develop an ideal framework that can help improve their employees’ commitment
and hence achieve their overall organizational goals. The general objective of this
study was to establish the effect emotional intelligence on employee commitment in
the Kenyan SACCOs. This was towards an effort to establish ways of improving the
employee commitment and hence reverse the SACCO’s overall poor performance.
The specific objectives of the study were to establish the effect of; self-awareness on
employee commitment, self-management on employee commitment, social
awareness on employee commitment and relationship management on employee
commitment in the Kenyan SACCOs. The research adopted survey research design.
The study focused on the 625 employees in the 51 deposits taking SACCOs
operating within Nairobi and Kiambu counties. Stratified random sampling technique
was used to select a sample of 243 respondents. Survey questionnaires were used to
collect both quantitative and qualitative data which was analyzed using SPSS and by
descriptive statistics were presented through percentages, means, standard deviations
and frequencies. Correlation results of the study demonstrated a strong relationship
between emotional intelligence and employee commitment. Regression results
showed that social awareness has the highest contribution to employee commitment
at 24.7% followed by relationship management at 18.4%, self-management at 10.3%
while self-awareness was at 6.2%. However, analysis of perceived emotional
intelligence showed that self awareness was the strongest driver of emotional
intelligence. Overall, the results showed that emotional intelligence explained 29.4%
positive variations on employee commitment. Further, the results showed higher
impact of emotional intelligence on commitment in males compared to females. The
study recommends that SACCOs should develop emotional intelligence
competencies of their employees. Emphasize should be on social awareness and
relationship management competence of emotional intelligence especially in males in
order to enhance employee commitment. Lastly, the overall model showed that selfawareness
and self-management are statistically insignificant when fitted in the
overall model yet when they are fitted individually, they are significant therefore,
further studies are recommended to establish moderating variables that can improve
the overall model on employee commitment.