THE EFFECT OF EMPLOYEES 'SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE ON INTERNAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A CASE OF A PUBLIC INSTITUTION

Abstract

Internal entrepreneurship performances of employees play an important role in the adaptation process of businesses in the business world. The new strategic direction created as a result of entrepreneurial thinking focuses on increasing or strengthening the ability to acquire innovative skills and capacity. Organizations that can achieve this gain can get the chance to be one step ahead of their competitors. Studies have emphasized that in order for the entrepreneurship to be successful, people who want to become an entrepreneur should have the ability of taking risks, self-confidence, firmness, communication skills, leadership and vision, they should also have high social intelligence. Social intelligence refers to the ability of an individual to recognize his own and others' feelings, to motivate himself, and to manage the emotions in his/her relationships well. This feature provides a positive guiding multiplier effect on internal entrepreneurship abilities. The aim of this study is to reveal the effect of social intelligence levels of employees on their internal entrepreneurship. The research consists of 850 employees of a public institution that carries out research and development activities. The number of samples determined by the Haphazard sampling method is 285 people, and as a result of the correlation analysis, social intelligence and internal entrepreneurship were found to be statistically significant in positive way with 20.4%. As a result of the regression analysis, when the social intelligence perception increases with 1 unit, the perception of internal entrepreneurship behavior will increase 0.297 unit. Thus, it was concluded that social intelligence affects internal entrepreneurship positively.