Title: Emotional intelligence in procurement management

Authors: Dirk-Jan F. Kamann; Edit M. Kővári

Addresses: Faculty of Economics and Business, Groningen, University of Groningen, The Netherlands; Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Pannonia, 10 Egyetem Utca, 8200 Veszprém, Hungary ' Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Pannonia, Veszprém, Hungary

Abstract: This contribution describes the role of emotional intelligence (EI) in procurement management (PM) and how to successfully operationalise and measure this concept. A literature review presents a well-tested questionnaire, which is applied in a survey among members of a national professional organisation in PM. These managers' self-control is found to be higher than in other surveys with other types of managers; their well-being level however is lower. This suggests that PM managers can control their emotion well, but they 'pay the price' in their happiness, optimism and self-esteem. In addition, male managers' self-control and well-being is found to be higher than their female counterparts. Demonstrating the possibility to operationalise EI in a reliable way, this study opens an agenda to relate various EI dimensions to a vast range of endogenous variables such as performance variables and exogenous variables like customer typology, nature of the supply system or the internal arena.

Keywords: emotional intelligence; empathy; procurement; purchasing and supply chain management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPM.2021.113493

International Journal of Procurement Management, 2021 Vol.14 No.2, pp.243 - 263

Received: 25 Jul 2019
Accepted: 01 Dec 2019
Published online: 08 Mar 2021 *

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