LINKING LEADERSHIP STYLE PERCEPTIONS OF SEAFARERS AND QUALITY OF WORK LIFE; THE ROLE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Seafarers are amongst the workers whose lives are fully affected by the quality of work-life as the ship is both working and living environment for them. Due to the fact that work and other aspects of life take place in this limited space, their perceptions related to the leadership styles adopted by their ship managers have come into prominence. Accordingly, this study intends to investigate the moderating role of emotional intelligence on the relationship between seafarers' perception of the leadership style of their managers and the quality of work life. Data collected from 475 seafarers working on merchant ships engaged in international voyages were analyzed using SPSS 22 (Process macro v3.4) and AMOS 22 programs. Research findings highlighted that leaders in marine operations appear to prefer instrumental leadership style to adapt to the actual context of maritime activities. Results also indicate that leadership have a positive effect on seafarers' perceptions of the quality of work-life, whereby supportive leadership is found to be the most influential. Finally, the moderator role of emotional intelligence between two variables is supported. These findings have important implications for ship managers since it attempts to identify factors that have the potential to influence the degree of seafarers' perception of quality of work life ranging from personal factors (emotional intelligence) to organizational factors (leadership styles). Therefore, this study contributes to the existing literature as these variables and their relationships have not been studied yet among maritime workers in merchant ships.