Eldercare demands, strain, and work engagement: The moderating role of perceived organizational support Hannes Zacher a, ⁎, Gabriele Winter b a School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia b Department of Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany article info abstract Article history: Received 23 August 2010 Available online 25 March 2011 Demographic changes give rise to an increasing number of middle-aged employees providing home-based care to an elderly family member. However, the potentially important role of employees' perceptions of organizational support for eldercare has so far not been investigated. The goal of this study was to examine a stressor–strain–outcome model (Koeske & Koeske, 1993) of eldercare strain as a mediator of the relationship between eldercare demands and caregivers' work engagement. Perceived organizational eldercare support was expected to attenuate the positive relationship between eldercare demands and eldercare strain and to buffer the negative relationship between eldercare strain and work engagement. Results of mediation and moderated mediation analyses with data collected from 147 employees providing eldercare supported the hypotheses. The findings suggest that perceived organiza- tional eldercare support is especially beneficial for employees' work engagement when eldercare demands and strain are high. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Eldercare Demands Strain Work engagement Perceived organizational support The populations in most developed and some developing countries will age dramatically over the next decades (Cohen, 2003). The fastest growing age group in these countries includes those most likely to need care by others: people aged 80 and older (United Nations, 2002). For example, it is estimated that the group of persons aged 85 and older will grow sharply from 5.8 million in 2010 to more than 18 million in 2050 in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009), and from 1.9 million in 2010 to about 6 million in 2050 in Germany (German Federal Statistical Office, 2009). At the same time, an increasing number of women, who traditionally represent the majority of family caregivers (Aronson, 1992), are entering the workforce. Due to these demographic changes, the provision of home-based care to an elderly family member has become a significant work–family issue in the 21st century (Smith, 2004). Researchers have acknowledged for some time the potentially important role of employees' perceptions of organizational support for eldercare (Dellmann-Jenkins & Bennett, 1994; Shoptaugh, Phelps, & Visio, 2004; Tennstedt & Gonyea, 1994; Winter, 2009). However, so far no empirical evidence for the beneficial effects of this form of perceived support from the organization exists. Based on the literature on perceived organizational support (POS)—the extent to which employees believe that “the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being” (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchinson, & Sowa, 1986, p. 501)—we define perceived organizational eldercare support (POES) in this study as the extent to which employees believe that their organization is concerned about and supports them with regard to their eldercare responsibilities. POES is also related to, but conceptually distinct from, the more general construct of perceived organizational family support (POFS), which describes employees' perceptions of the extent to which the organization supports their work-life balance (Jahn, Thompson, & Kopelman, 2003; Kopelman, Prottas, Thompson, & Jahn, 2006; Thompson, Jahn, Kopelman, & Prottas, 2004). Journal of Vocational Behavior 79 (2011) 667–680 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: h.zacher@psy.uq.edu.au (H. Zacher). 0001-8791/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2011.03.020 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Vocational Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jvb