Quality teachers are valuable assets of any country in the process of developing human capital for a knowledge-based economy. The level of emotional intelligence and balancing of work and family responsibilities are much more important especially for teachers in improving their quality. A perusal of the Sri Lankan research literature showed that there was no investigation that focused on the impact of emotional intelligence on work-family conflict among school teachers in North Central Province in Sri Lanka. This paper investigated the impact of emotional intelligence on work-family conflict among the school teachers in North Central Province in Sri Lanka. A sample of 325 school teachers were selected from Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa districts using the convenience sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was used to measure emotional intelligence and work-family conflict. The data collected were analyzed using correlation coefficient and regression analysis. The results showed that the level of emotional intelligence had a significant negative relationship with work-family conflict. The teachers who have high emotional intelligence show less work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict. It is concluded that the possession of high emotional intelligence is more important when balancing work-family responsibilities.

Quality teachers are the decisive factors in developing human capital in the knowledge-based economy. Economists, educators, policy makers and other stake holders, in general, accept the need for well-satisfied, highly committed and high performing teachers for the nation because they are working with the young blood of the country. They need to have a free mind as well as knowledge so as to concentrate on the teacher-learner process. With this connection, work and life satisfaction of the teachers emerge as the important factors because they are the key factors to a trouble-free mind of the teachers. The teachers can find satisfaction with their jobs and life if they can balance their work and family life. Anyway, work-family balance is a major problem in modern society. Traditionally, men performed jobs, and women engaged in household duties to help the family (Barnett and Hyde, 2001). However, this trend has changed with the dual-career households. Like other employees, teachers have to play different roles simultaneously. They have to fulfil work and family roles together.

While palying multiple roles, they are more likely to experience inter-role conflicts (Boyar et al., 2005). According to Cole (2004), this conflict can happen when the employees put more efforts in fulfilling their work demands instead of fulfilling their family demands or vice versa.

Organizational Behavior Journal, Emotional Intelligence, Work-Family Conflict Among School Teachers, Knowledge-based economy, Teacher-learner process.