Dynamics of Emotional Intelligence and Public Management Decision-Making

Psychologists and other scholars in related fields continue to explore the effectiveness of emotional intelligence in diverse areas due to its acceptability as the revolutionary new science of performance success. Emotional intelligence and its multiple competencies promote emotional understanding ability that supports creative thinking in problem-solving like decision making. Decision-making is a matter of choosing the best course of action from available alternatives. Despite the beauty of the three models of decision-making it is crucial to stress that implementation is important because it is the outward manifestation of the decision itself. Quality decision making needs emotional perception which includes the ability to distinguish between honest and dishonest emotional expressions, feelings and influencing thought processes. Self-concept and the stability of personality help individuals in managing relationships and people appraise and communicate emotions, and how they use such emotions influence their behaviour in problem solving situations. Decision-making is a major part of problem solving, therefore, the interaction with cognition and affect concentrates not only on memory or judgment, but also on more general contributions of emotionality to personality. Effective implementation requires the competencies of self-assertiveness so as not to give opportunity for miscarriage of the decision. Implementation helps to avoid the problem of indecision. While evaluation of a decision should be on continuous basis, a systematic evaluation should be built into the decision process. Using the exploratory research design involving 205 participants the result indicates strong positive relationship between emotional intelligence and quality public management decision-making. The study offers suggestion for further study, and recommends that public management decision-making should not overlook the need for efficiency in public sector management