Elements of emotional intelligence that facilitate exper-to-peer tacit knowledge transfer

The purpose of this quantitative study was to compare the emotional intelligence competencies of a group of technical experts with high skills in problem-solving, leadership and mentoring (Group A) with a group of technical experts with lower skills in problem solving, leadership, and mentoring (Group B) at a semiconductor manufacturing factory in the United States using an emotional intelligence survey. Leveraging and maintaining an expert knowledge base in an organization is critical to the intellectual capital of a company and promotes a competitive edge in the marketplace. High rates of employee turnover and the subsequent loss of expertise in an organization serve to weaken the existing expert knowledge base. Organizations are often faced with the challenge of capturing and transferring tacit knowledge to other employees within in a short period of time following the loss of expert personnel. It is likely that core components of experts' emotional and technical skills help facilitate the speed of knowledge transfer. The findings revealed through the analysis of each emotional intelligence subscale individually revealed little to no significant difference between the groups but when all the emotional intelligence subscales were analyzed together the findings revealed that there was a significant difference between the two groups. There was a combination of emotional intelligence composite variables that differentiated Group A from Group B but further analysis is needed to understand the exact combination of emotional intelligence components. The classification of Group A and Group B was 95% accurate and achieved a 99% True Positive rating on the Receiver Operating Characteristic. The EQ-i with the data analysis may provide a potential classification model to classify participants in Group A or Group B.