An examination of emotional intelligence in UAE projects

Developing human factors at the emotional and cognitive levels is significantly vital to project success. The notion of emotional intelligence is growingly gaining attention, and studies on this field are being performed increasingly. Yet, the studies that have been conducted in projects in the United Arab Emirates are scarce. Therefore, this study aims to shed light on the emotional intelligence level within decision-makers (project managers and engineers specifically) who are currently operating projects in the UAE, specifically, the field of construction and information technology (IT), and how far it contributes to project success. A questionnaire has been prepared for data collection. It consists of a section that measures EI among respondents and another section measuring project success. A total of 106 responses across the United Arab Emirates were collected from project managers and project engineers working in construction/IT firms and analyzed using IBM’s SPSS v26 software package. Our results showed that PMEs in the UAE have a high level of emotional intelligence and EI is strongly correlated to project success. We observed that PMEs in the UAE prefer to intermingle with people of the same culture, as suggested by the results of the hypothesis testing. Since emotional intelligence was indeed a contributor to project success, it is suggested that employers should pay more attention to developing their employees’ EI level, as well as prioritize candidates with high levels of EI during the recruiting process.