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What is organizational emotional intelligence? Does it matter? And how can organizations increase their level of organizational emotional intelligence? In an attempt to find answers to these questions, this chapter provides a conceptualization of organizational emotional intelligence, discusses what we know about its associations with organizational outcomes, and proposes several practically relevant ways to improve organizational emotional intelligence. Specifically, organizational emotional intelligence is conceptualized as a combination of the aggregate level of individual emotional intelligence of employees and the utilization of emotionally intelligent procedures, norms, and behaviors throughout an organization. Preliminary evidence suggests that organizational emotional intelligence is positively associated with organizational performance and employees’ health. Organizations might be able to increase their organizational emotional intelligence by accumulating individual emotional intelligence among their employees and by applying emotionally intelligent procedures, some of which are discussed in this chapter.

We offer a new perspective on group affective diversity by introducing the construct of mixed group mood, denoting co-occurring positive and negative mood states between different members of a group. Mixed group mood is characterized by four facets, namely members’ distribution between two positive and negative subgroups, subgroups’ average mood intensity, subgroups’ mood intensity heterogeneity, and individual members’ mood ambivalence. Building on information/decision-making and social categorization/similarity–attraction perspectives, we explore the performance consequences of mixed group mood along these four facets and we discuss implications and directions for future research.

In this chapter, we extend existing models of individual and collective emotional intelligence to the organizational level and provide an empirical study on the performance impact of organizational emotional intelligence. We propose that organizational emotional intelligence is composed of the average level of individual emotional intelligence of organization members and the collectively shared emotionally intelligent norms, values, and behaviors that shape their interaction. Across 156 organizations, we demonstrate sufficient within-organization consistency and between-organization difference to consider emotional intelligence a collective organizational characteristic. In addition, we show that the level of organizational emotional intelligence is positively associated with operational performance, financial performance, and innovation performance, and negatively associated with involuntary absence. Thus, organizational emotional intelligence can be considered a valuable asset for organizations.

The chapters in this volume are drawn from the best contributions to the 2010 International Conference on Emotion in Organizational Life held in Montreal, Canada in August of that year, complemented with invited chapters consonant with the theme of this volume. This highly successful conference, founded by the editors of this volume, and first held in 1998, is fondly referred to by many as the “Emonet” conference, after the email discussion listserv set up to support the conference and all those interested in advancing knowledge in emotions in organizational settings. We are especially grateful to the conference paper reviewers and acknowledge their service in the appendix of the book.

Mirele Cardoso do Bonfim is Professor of Psychology at Salvador University, Brazil, and she is psychologist at Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, Bahia (IFBA). She received her master's degree in Organizational Psychology from Federal University of Bahia. Her primary researches have been focused on emotions at work and emotional labor. C.V.: Available at http://lattes.cnpq.br/2452149954749191