Purpose
Fit and misfit (F&M) affect thoughts, actions and implementation. Both concepts are unknown in the law or in the public administration; so, this paper aims to demonstrate how these concepts can be addressed from the legal point of view.
Design/methodology/approach
F&M have not yet been addressed from a legal point of view. To determine a connection between them, the rule of law, F&M is compared with the indexes of happiness and life satisfaction. The claim that F&M can be more objectively stated in regulation that must be based on public participation is tested with Google Trends. Google Trends gave data on the searched notions (regulation, participation, organisation and misfit), for which statistical calculations are made to establish relations between them.
Findings
F&M are an intangible capital with which the rule of law is tightly connected. Citizens are happy and satisfied in countries with a high rank on the rule of law and vice versa. Correlations are positive for the misfit and regulation, participation and organisation, regulation and organisation and regulation and participation, while those for misfit and organisation are low. Google search therefore denies the strongest connection between misfit and organisation that is in the centre of F&M literature.
Originality/value
F&M have not yet been addressed from a legal point of view, although they have a lot of similarity if not the same. Based on this predisposition, this paper refutes some “romantic” ideas about person–environment and person–organisation fit, and it gives opposite arguments from the public law point of view. The paper tries to point to optimal specificity for fit in a legal environment based on proposed indicators and gives directions for further research.
