This research investigates the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI)
and relational social capital. EI is regarded as a social competence which facilitates
and promotes the quality of interpersonal and social relationships, and relational
social capital is a well-known concept representing those individual qualities
and resources such as trust, identification, and obligation or commitment which
shape high-quality interpersonal relationships. However, no study to date has
empirically examined how relational social capital may be predicted by EI as a
component of individuals’ social competence. Our main arguments are that the
four main dimensions of EI including self-awareness, self-management, social
awareness, and relationship management would increase the level of relational
social capital among employees. Our structural equation modeling analysis on
survey data across 375 employees of 64 randomly selected branches of an Iranian
bank shows that although self-management and relationship management
dimensions are significantly related to relational social capital, self-awareness
and social awareness are not significantly related to this concept.