The relationship between career adaptability and job content plateau: The mediating roles of fit perceptions

•Career adaptability (CA) negatively related to job content plateau (JCP).•CA positively related to person-job (P-J) fit and person-organization (P-O) fit.•P-J fit and P-O fit negatively related to JCP.•P-J fit and P-O fit mediated the relationship between CA and JCP.•Women had a stronger indirect effect of CA on JCP via P-J fit than men.

This study is the first to test career adaptability as an antecedent of the job content plateau. Based on career construction theory and person-environment fit theory, it examined the mediating effects of person-job fit and person-organization fit on the relationship between career adaptability and the job content plateau. Results from 270 full time workers showed that employees with higher levels of career adaptability were less likely to experience job content plateaus. Partial mediating effects were found for both person-job fit and person-organization fit. Specifically, career adaptability firstly led to increased person-job fit and person-organization fit, which in turn resulted in decreased job content plateaus. Additional analyses showed that the mediating effect of person-job fit was stronger for female than for male employees. This study identified a new antecedent (i.e., career adaptability) of the job content plateau and revealed the functional mechanism underlying the effect of this antecedent. It offers innovative and useful insights for career management practice.