Abstract
This study investigates the mediating role of organizational citizenship behavior in the relationship between management control systems and withdrawal cognition of managers in the governmental sector. The study also examines the moderating role of managers’ allocentrism in the relationship. Although it is well known that management control systems have an intimate relationship with employees’ attitudes and organization’s performance outcomes, no studies have yet clarified the relationships of management control systems with organizational citizenship behavior and withdrawal cognitions at the individual level. Moreover, no research has examined the role of allocentrism in the management accounting discipline, although allocentrism constitutes a key contextual construct. Using structural equation modeling on survey data collected from 101 governmental managers in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, we find support of our hypothesized model. This study found that organizational citizenship behavior mediated the relationship between two key management control systems, beliefs control and boundary control, and withdrawal cognitions. The results also show that these relationships were stronger in high allocentric settings. The findings offer implications regarding how management control systems can improve managers’ citizen behaviors and mitigate withdrawal cognitions; and which governmental organizations benefit more from allocentrism.