%0 Journal Article
%T Person–Organization Misfit as an Evolving Relational System of Mutual Adaptation
%A Mark Anderson
%A Lisa Wong
%A Sarah Lee
%J Journal of Applied Organizational Systems and Behavior
%@ 3108-852X
%D 2022
%V 2
%N 2
%R 10.51847/IAgdAju1Bj
%P 54-63
%X Person–organization fit is commonly treated as a relatively stable correspondence between employee and organizational attributes. That framing is useful for comparison, but it underrepresents how misfit is noticed, interpreted, negotiated, intensified, repaired, or carried forward through interaction. This Original Relational Systems Article develops a non-empirical account of person–organization misfit as an evolving relationship rather than a fixed individual condition. The proposed Relational Misfit System links discrepancy-generating conditions, employee appraisal, identity relevance, employee adaptation, organizational interpretation, organizational response, and subsequent relationship states. It distinguishes episodic from accumulating misfit, employee agency from accommodation pressure, voice opportunity from consequential influence, and continued employment from successful repair. It further proposes adaptation-burden allocation as a relational construct describing who is expected to change, at what cost, and with what authority. The model allows trajectories of provisional repair, constrained persistence, escalation, productive difference, internal mobility, and exit without assuming a universal sequence. Its practical implication is not that organizations should maximize similarity, but that they should examine how difference becomes interpreted, whose adaptation is demanded, and whether responses alter enacted conditions. The synthesis remains conceptually bounded: most evidence concerns employee perceptions, local relationships, or observational associations, while reciprocal organizational adaptation is less directly established. Testing therefore requires intensive longitudinal, matched multilevel, qualitative-process, and quasi-experimental designs capable of separating temporal association, causal mechanism, and substantive organizational-level change.
%U https://apsshs.com/article/personorganization-misfit-as-an-evolving-relational-system-of-mutual-adaptation-emgrgey9tmcq9i4