Examining causal effects of Emotional Intelligence on human related challenges occurring in Agile managed Information Systems projects

Abstract

Agile project management has become a widely implemented project management approach in Information Systems (IS). Yet, along with its growing popularity, the amount of concerns raised in regard to human related challenges is rapidly increasing. Nevertheless, the extant scholarly literature has neglected to identify the primary origins and reasons of these challenges. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine if these challenges are caused by a lack of Emotional Intelligence (EI) by means of a quantitative approach, which includes two main steps. Firstly, based on a sample of 447 IS-professionals, the psychometric properties of their EI in regard to their personal characteristics is examined. Secondly, based on the findings of the first analysis, the causal inference of EI on these challenges is computed using Propensity Score Matching based on a second sample of 194 agile practitioners. Different dimensions of EI were found to have a low to medium impact on human related challenges occurring in agile teams in regard to anxiety, motivation, mutual trust and communication competence. Hence, these findings offer important new knowledge for IS-scholars, project managers and human resource practitioners, about the vital role of EI for educating, staffing and training of IS-professionals working in agile teams.