# Introduction o generate modest advantages and durable success, recent thinking by researcher and experts alike expresses to the value of providing a dedicate work environment for employees. Organizations are combinations of individual with different views, beliefs, ideas and attitudes. These differences influence the way these individuals infer events in the organization. These differences feed into the individual understanding related with organizational actions like politics (Silvester, 2008). Organizational politics explained as actions that authorize people in organization to attain goals without going through proper channels. Whether political activities support or spoil the organization depends on whether the goals of individuals are dependable with the organizational goals. There has no doubt that political beliefs are an ordinary observable fact in every organization. Organizational politics represented devious behavior of employees towards their work environment only for their self interest. These self interests may be at the cost of other employees or may be organizational goals as well. Organizations that are common with politics give an uncomfortable environment for employees and fail to create workable behavior for their employees. During the past two decades, research on organizational politics has paying attention mostly on testing the perceptions of organizational politics model. According to the model, organizational, work environment and personal influences of perceptions of organizational politics, which in turn give rise to a number of work outcomes like job involvement, job satisfaction, anxiety, turnover and absence (Ferris et al., 1989). Research examined the negative implications of perceived organizational politics for various work attitudes, behaviors, and performance measures, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job burnout, stress, turnover intentions, and negligent behavior (Chang et al., 2009). Politics is a fact of life in organizations. People who ignore this fact of life do so at their own peril. This means that politics in organizations is a reality and therefore largely seen as a necessary evil. Thus, organizational politics is a prevalent element of virtually all work environments, and its influence has been substantiated across a variety of domains. It has been viewed negatively, neutrally or positively.However, until recently the emotional and feelings implications of organizational politics have been overlooked. Mayer and Salovey(1997) suggests that "emotional intelligence involves the ability to perceive accurately, appraise and express emotions; the ability to access and generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth". In recent times, the researchers have begun to identify the role of emotion in organizational politics. Drawing from affective events theory, which holds that emotional experiences at work influence employees' attitudes and behaviors. Researcher suggested that emotion and emotional behaviors mediate the relationship between perceptions of politics and several attitudinal and behavioral outcomes (Liu et al., 2006).Emotional intelligence influences how organizational politics is perceived, thereby indirectly affecting employees' attitudes and behaviors. A recent study of Vigoda-Gadot and Meisler (2010) addressed this question and explored the relationship between emotional intelligence, perception of organizational politics and several work outcomes. Findings from that study found no support for the suggested relationship between emotional intelligence, perception of organizational politics. # a) Purpose of the study This study aims to examine the relationship between perceived organizational politics and emotional intelligence and work outcomes and explores the role of emotion in organizational politics in banking sector of Pakistan. # II. # Literature Review a) Organizational politics The phenomenon of organizational politics was first introduced in academic literature by Burns (1967). According to him politics occurs when others are made use of as resources in competitive situation. Since then the construct has been conceptualized differently by researcher. In the same line, the researcher view organizational politics as a behavior, formal or informal that is motivated by self-interest, executed with the sole purpose to satisfy individual interest now or in the future. Organizational politics refers to actions taken within the organization in order to acquire, develop, and use power and other resources in a way that will lead to preferred personal outcomes (Pfeffer, 1981). A literature review reveals that most research in the field has taken a negative view of this phenomenon, focusing on semilegal actions, manipulation, and coercive influence (Ferris and King, 1992). Previous research has studied the antecedents and consequences of influence tactics employed in organizational power struggles. More recent studies have focused on exploring the effects of political skill on career success, job effectiveness, and work performance (Todd et al., 2009). The manners, in which employees perceive organizational politics, and the implications of such perceptions, have also been studied. In this regard, Ferris et al. (1989) model has been recognized as a useful tool for discussing how organizational politics functions within organizations, and various studies have validated its key elements, documenting negative correlations between perception of organizational politics and desirable work attitudes such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and positive correlations between perception of organizational politics and undesirable outcomes such as job burnout, stress, turnover intentions and negligent behavior (Chang et al., 2009)Lately, organizational politics researcher have started to acknowledge the potential contribution of emotion to both the perceptions and implications of organizational politics. In a revised version of the perception of organizational politics model, researcher suggested positive and negative affectivity as antecedents of perception of organizational politics. Hochwarter and Tread way (2003) took a somewhat different approach and proposed an interaction effect of positive and negative affectivity and perception of organizational politics on job satisfaction. Their study found empirical evidence for this line of thinking. Other studies have integrated emotion in organizational politics from a different perspective. Focus on affective events theory, Liu et al. (2006) agreed that emotion and emotional behaviors serve as intermediate linkages in the association between perception of organizational politics and various attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. According to him, political acts by oneself and others can be viewed as work events that trigger emotional reactions, which serve as a core mechanism through which perception of organizational politics affect attitudes and behaviors such as burnout, cynicism, job satisfaction and affective commitment. Rosen et al. ( 2009) followed a similar line of thought that the daily hassles associated with organizational politics arouse negative emotional responses, which link perceived politics with job satisfaction and other work outcomes. They found that frustration partially mediates the relationship between perception of organizational politics and job satisfaction, and that frustration and job satisfaction together mediate the effects of perceived politics on task performance, organizational citizenship behavior and turnover intentions. # b) Emotional intelligence Mayer and Salovey (1997) define emotional intelligence as "the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotions; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotions and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth". In their model, known as the ability model, emotional intelligence combines intellectual intelligence and emotion (Mayer et al., 2008), as it involves an intellectual understanding of emotion and how emotion can guide both thought and actions. Theoretical approaches to emotional intelligence can be divided according to whether they focus on specific abilities or on a more global integration of those capacities. The specific ability approaches concern individual mental capacities that are important to emotional intelligence. The integrative model approaches regard emotional intelligence asinter related global ability. Specific ability approaches to emotional intelligence study issues such as how well a person identifies emotions in faces or how well a person understands emotional meanings. Integrative model approaches to emotional intelligence focus on the study of specific abilities combined together. In recent years, scholars have also introduced a third approach to emotional intelligence, called a mixed model (Neubauer and Freudenthaler 2005). This approach includes a variety of non emotional intelligence qualities and consequently, appears to fall partly or largely outside the boundaries of the concept. The mixed model typically studies some relevant, emotion specific abilities but also includes motives, social styles, self related qualities and other traits that do not focus primarily on emotion or emotional reasoning. Thus, models of emotional intelligence begin with emotional intelligence related qualities such as the ability to perceive emotions accurately, and add (1) motives such as the need for achievement (2) social styles such as gregariousness and assertiveness (3) self related qualities such as self esteem and (4) control related qualities such as flexibility and control (Mayer, Roberts, and Barsade2008). The integration of these additions creates the mixed models for emotional intelligence. All the foregoing models for the study of emotional intelligence are relevant and should be considered in a study of the banking sector where a few approaches can be used to initiate a useful discourse on the topic.The mixed models have led some critics to question the validity of emotional intelligence as a construct, with particular concerns about its components, measurement, and overlaps with personality traits (Davies et al., 1998). Research during the past decade has shown that high emotional intelligence improves outcomes on various career and work measures, including transformational leadership, conflict resolution, success in job interviews, job performance, perceived organizational justice, and job satisfaction (Meisler, 2012). Aside from its direct effects on such work outcomes, emotional intelligence is also thought to play a moderating role, enhancing the effects of other determinants of career success. Other researchers have explored the possibility that the associations between emotional intelligence and work outcomes are mediated by intervening variables (Mikolajczak et al., 2007). Other findings from the same study showed that emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and organizational commitment, as well as the relationship between political skill and absenteeism among public personnel. A significant relationship between emotional intelligence and political skill was also found by Meisler (2012). # c) Organizational politics with emotional intelligence It is difficult to imagine that organizational politics does not inducing force ful emotions among those who participate in, or even witness, the political game. It is much more reasonable to assume that organizational politics inducing emotions such as anger and frustration. Given the contribution of emotional intelligence to understanding and regulating positive and negative emotions (Mayer,2001). It is surprising that the effects of emotional intelligence on the perceptions and implications of organizational politics have not yet been extensively studied. The present study will address this issue and explore the relationships between perceptions of organizational politics, emotional intelligence, and three attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Empirical evidence from the public sector, presented by Vigoda-Gadot and Meisler (2010), showed an insignificant relationship between emotional intelligence and perception of organizational politics. Furthermore, findings from that study found no support for the assumed mediation effect of perception of organizational politics on the relationship between emotional intelligence and work outcomes. The model suggests that employees' emotional intelligence affects the manner in which organizational politics is evaluated and perceived, and affects the work outcomes through its effect on perception of organizational politics. Studies have found a positive correlation between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction (Sy et al.,2006), a negative correlation between emotional intelligence and negligent behavior andinconsistent findings concerning the relationship between emotional intelligenceand turnover intentions (Wong and Law, 2002).Therefore it is believe that the effect of emotional intelligence on job satisfaction, turnover intentions and negligent behavior is atleast partly a consequence of its effect on perception of organizational politics. Higher emotional intelligence isexpected to lead to lower perceptions of organizational politics,which in turn willenhance employees' job satisfaction and reduce both turnover intentions and negligentbehavior. # e) Hypotheses of Study The study suggests the following hypotheses: H1. Emotional intelligence will be negatively related to perceived politics. H2.Emotional intelligence will positively relate to job satisfaction and negatively relate to turnover intentions and negligent behavior. # III. # Methodology This research employs descriptive and analytical methods involving the quantitative approach. The primary data has been collected from participants by using a questionnaire specifically designed for this research. # a) Participants and procedure The target population consisted of employees working in banking sector in Lahore, Pakistan.A comparable sampling frame of 200 employees working at managerial position and non managerial position was elicited from the target population. # Data collection instrument The self deigned questionnaire was used for data collection based on five point likert scale (from strongly disagree to strongly agree) to measures the Relationship between perception of organizational politics,emotional intelligence and work outcomes. # c) Measures This study used the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) tomeasure emotional intelligence (Wong and Law, 2002). This study chose to usethis self-report scale because in a recent study (Lawet al., 2008) the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale was found to be a better predictor of objective job performance compared to the performance based emotional intelligence test.The scale consists of four dimensions: (1) Self emotion appraisal(2) Others' emotion appraisal(3) Regulation of emotion and (4) Use of emotion and responses ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) and the reliability was 0.609. most accepted measure of perception of organizational politics inthe literature and responses ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) and the reliability was 0.727.The study used the Schriesheim and Tsui (1980) six-item scale to measure the Job satisfaction where respondents were asked to indicate how satisfied they were with different aspects oftheir job.The responses ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) and the reliability was 0.65.For Turnover intentions variable, the study used a four-item scale based on Farrelland Rusbult (1992).The responses ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) and the reliability was 0.75.For Negligent behavior, used the four-item scale of Vigoda- For the measurement of Perceptions of organizational politics, this study using 12 items from Kacmar and Carlson's (1997) scale. This scale is the (strongly agree) and the reliability was 0.75.For Negligent behavior, used the four-item scale of Vigoda-Gadot and Meisler (2010).The responses ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) and the reliability was 0.78. This study has collected several control variables as a routine procedure. These control variables areage, tenure, gender and education were also tested throughout the various stages of the analysis. ) .This finding disagreed with the hypothesis (H1) thatemotional intelligence will be negatively related to perceived politics. # Emotional Intelligence Work Outcomes # IV. # Result The prediction thatEI is positively related to job satisfaction (r =0.157) negatively related to turnover intentions and negligent behavior (r = -0.179 , r = -0.125) respectively was supported H2. In addition, POP is positively related to job satisfaction(r = 0.074) and negatively related turnover intentions and negligent behavior (r = -0.126,r = -0.175). The correlations between POP and each of the separate EI facets were significant: self-emotion appraisal (r = 0.635), others' emotion appraisal (r = 0.546), use of emotion (r = 0.619) and regulation of emotion (r = 0.709). # Job # Discussion and Conclusion The study investigated the relationship of emotional intelligence (EI), organizational politics (POP) and work outcomes in banking sector of Pakistan. In line with this, the direct relationship between EI and organizational politics and work outcome; Job satisfaction, turnover intentions and negligent behavior was examined..It should be noted that in contrast to previous research which found negative relationship between EI and POP (Vigoda-Gadot and Meisler, 2010). The present study show positive relationship between the two variables. Findings of this study the show that elements of emotion can shape perceptions of politics and that the manner in which employees understand and regulate felt emotions affects their interpretation of the political arena. The most salient finding in this study was the direct relationship between EI and job satisfaction, which match with previous studies (Sy, Tram, and O'Hara 2006). In addition, other work outcomes were also affected by EI, directly or indirectly (Van Rooy and Viswesvaran 2004). One of the contributions of this study is the reconfirmation of the idea that healthy emotional constructs and the emotional intelligence of the employees adds to job satisfaction and thus may be used as a performance indicator for the quality of banking services. Aside from its contribution to the organizational politics literature, this study also offers insights for the field of emotional intelligence. Surprisingly, little research has explored the contribution of EI to shaping employees' work attitudes, behaviors and performance (Law et al., 2008). Most research on emotional intelligence in the workplace has explored its contribution to leadership behaviors (Wong and Law, 2002) rather than its effect on the general employees population and the small number of studies that have examined the effect of EI on behavioral and attitudinal outcomes have chiefly tested direct relationships between these variables (Sy et al., 2006). The current study is one of thethem to explore direct relationships between emotional intelligence and employees' work attitudes/behaviors. # VI. # Recommendation for Future Research The current study and its findings raise a number of ideas for future research. The present study explored the associations between emotional intelligence, perceived politics, and the three attitudinal and behavioral outcomes: job satisfaction, turnover intentions and negligent behavior. 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