Abstract
The objective of this article is to demonstrate the importance of emotional intelligence in shaping corporate investment decisions. It aims to explain the indirect relationship between economic growth and emotional intelligence. This relationship shows the effect of emotional skills on encouraging creativity in companies and, subsequently, on the growth of the national economy.
Exploratory in nature, the empirical part attempted to fill a gap in economic science research by presenting a survey of managers of large private companies in Tunisia. Analysis of the data collected revealed the importance of the behavioural dimension in explaining variations in sectorial GDP (a proxy for the contribution of companies to economic growth). The empirical analysis shows the indirect effect of the behavioural dimension in explaining economic growth.
However, the emotional intelligence of the leader is negatively correlated with sectorial GDP variation. This result contradicts our theoretical study. It attests to the negative effect of emotional management on wealth creation. However, relationship analysis announces the positive effect of emotional intelligence on the level of productivity of employees. This soft skill is positively correlated with employee productivity. This implies that emotional intelligence contributes to improving employee productivity, but it is insufficient to guarantee value creation.
We also observed a positive correlation between the performance indicators of national firms (competitiveness, productivity, profitability, innovation effort, size) and sectorial GDP variation. This result implies that Tunisian companies are characterized by high benefit, high productivity, and competitiveness. This success depends on the key skills of employees, including emotional intelligence. The analysis of economic growth by integrating the behavioural dimension is consistent with that of endogenous growth theory, which shows the importance of new technologies in capital accumulation and economic growth. From this point of view, the contribution of this article is to encourage Tunisian companies to invest in human capital, including emotional learning.