The Mediating Effect of Informal Accountability for Others

This study is a systematic inquiry into the relationship between personal and organizational antecedents (i.e., self-regulation and embeddedness), informal accountability for others (IAFO), and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). The novel contribution that this paper attempts to make to the literature is showing that the relationships between embeddedness, self-regulation and OCBs are at least partially mediated by IAFO. We investigated these hypotheses using data collected across two different samples: an organizational sample of 105 employees from a physical fitness facility and the other an amalgam sample of 187 working adults. Results indicated that IAFO fully mediated the relationship between selfregulation and OCB and partially mediated the relationship between embeddedness and OCB in the organizational sample. Data from the amalgam sample suggested that the relationship between selfregulation and OCB also was fully mediated IAFO, and the embeddedness - OCB relationship partially mediated. Strengths, limitations, directions for future research, and practical implications are discussed.