The mediating role of emotional intelligence in the effect of crisis management on performance in the Covid-19: Example of health sector

Worldwide, the COVID-19 epidemic has become a widespread pandemic and seriously life-threatening, causing a crisis. Large-scale crises such as the pandemic bring important responsibilities to individuals, society and organizations. Minimizing the effects of the crisis and creating new opportunities from these crises will be possible with the ability of the business and good management of the crisis. In this process, managers with high emotional intelligence and their ability to produce urgent solutions are of great importance in order to manage the crisis correctly by minimizing the negative effects of the pandemic. The aim of this study is to determine the mediating role of emotional intelligence in the effect of the Covid-19 crisis management on the performance of the healthcare personnel in private hospitals serving on the European side of Istanbul with the help of the structural equation (SEM) model. The sample of the study consists of 692 health personnel in different positions. According to the SEM estimation results; crisis management dimension has a significant positive effect on performance (β = 0.482, p <0.01). The crisis management dimension has a positive and significant effect on emotional intelligence (β =0.231, p <0.01). Emotional intelligence dimension has a positive and significant effect on performance (β =0.394, p <0.01). It has been determined that emotional intelligence has a mediating role in the effect of crisis management on performance. Thus, the H1, H2, H3 and H4 hypotheses were accepted. In addition, in the group differences tests for demographic characteristics, significant differences were obtained for some dimensions in terms of gender, age, marital status, education, income perception, time worked in the profession, and time worked in the hospital. The sub-hypothesis H5 was partially accepted. Keywords: Crisis Management, Performance, Emotional Intelligence, Structural Equation Model