Emotional intelligence, organizational networks and information flows : Goleman and globalization

This paper examines the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) as articulated by Goleman. In doing so, it sees his theory as a development of, and a point of departure from, the concept articulated by Mayer and Salovey. In a wider sense, while Mayer and Salovey focus on the role of emotional intelligence in expediting information processing and rational decision making, Goleman focuses on emotional and informational circuits and flows. Furthermore, Goleman sees the emotionally intelligent human subject as extremely malleable. Goleman’s EI is then put forward as a key category to facilitate a research agenda in the areas of structural holes and social networks.