A Project Report on

Analysis of Dress Code as a

form of Non-Verbal
Communication and its use and
impact upon Communication
Power in Organizations
Jaipuria Institute of
Management,
Lucknow

Submitted
To Submitted By
Prof. Shailja
Agarwal Kanishka
Jauhari
PGD
M-09-064

Acknowledgement
Completion of any work or project depends
upon the cooperation, coordination, efforts
and several resources of material,
knowledge, energy and time.
I am very pleased to present this project
report successfully. I feel very fortunate to
express my feeling about the faculty
members & all the friends who have
contributed many suggestions for its
improvement.
I am very thankful to the teacher Prof.
Shailja Agarwal; she not only helped to
make this report come true but also gave the
valuable inspiration at every critical
moment.
I express my strong sense of gratitude to her.
She helped in every possible way beside the
useful guidance & the constructive inputs
regarding final shaping up of this report.
Introduction

Clothing is an aspect of human physical

appearance, and like other aspects of human
physical appearance it has social
significance. All societies have dress codes,
most of which are unwritten but understood
by most members of the society. The dress
code has built in rules or signals indicating
the message being given by a person's
clothing and how it is worn. This message
may include indications of the
person's social class, income, occupation,
ethnic and religious affiliation, attitude,
marital status,etc.
Clothes convey other social messages
including the claiming personal or cultural
identity, the establishing, maintaining, or
defying social group norms, and
appreciating comfort and functionality.
There is a thorough analysis of three
research papers on the theme of dress code
in an organization as a form of non-verbal
communication and its effective use under
different situations.

Comparative Analysis
Paper Title:
Paper 1:
Dressing to impress: Beliefs and attitudes
regarding workplace attire
Paper 2:
The effects of appropriateness of
service contact personnel dress on
customer expectations of service
quality and purchase intention: The
moderating influences of
involvement and gender
Paper 3:
The Role of Clothing in Extended Inferences

Year of Publication:
Paper 1: Fall 2006

Paper 2: 2004

Paper 3: December 1989

Authors:

Paper 1: Joy V. Peluchette

Katherine Karl
Kathleen Rust
Paper 2: Chris Y. Shao
Julie Baker
Judy A. Wagner

Paper 3: Jane E. Workman

 Kim K. P. Johnson

Research Objectives:

Paper 1:
The purpose of this paper was:

(1) to investigate the attitudes and

beliefs of individuals with regard to their
attire in the workplace and

(2) to examine the extent to which

individuals use attire to accomplish
certain objectives in the workplace.

This study targeted both men and women

working in corporate work settings.
Paper 2:

The study reported here empirically

examined the following research questions:
First, what is the impact of appropriateness
of service contact personnel dress on
customer expectations of service quality and
purchase intent?
Second, does a customer’s involvement with
the service decision influence the impact of
dress cues on expectations and purchase
intent?
Finally, do males and females respond
differently to service employee dress cues?

Paper 3:
The purpose of this study was
(1) to examine whether interpretative
inferences about others made on the basis of
their clothing, go beyond personal
characteristics to include extended
inferences about the company for which an
individual works, and
(2) to determine whether these extended
inferences were correlated with the
interpretative inferences.
Volunteer subjects viewed a photograph of a
bogus taxicab driver, appearing in either
appropriate or inappropriate clothing, and
made inferences about his personality
characteristics and abilities and
characteristics of the company, in this case
the city for which he worked.

Demographic Details:
Paper 1:
\TTT This study utilized a sample of
graduate students enrolled in MBA
programs at three medium-sized
Universities, two located in the Midwestand
the other located in the southeastern part of
the United States.
Of the 200 surveys
distributed, 109 surveys were returned,
producing a response rate of 55%. Because
three of the surveys contained missing
data, 106 useable surveys were submitted
for data analysis. Slightly more than half of
the respondents (60%) were male.
Although respondents ranged in age from 22
to 59, the mean age was 30 years. With
regard to position, nearly half of the sample
(48%) consisted of management or
executive personnel. About 25% of the
sample was currently working in banking or
finance institutions, 22% in manufacturing,
11% in healthcare, and the remaining
portion in education, government or non-
profit organizations. Most (61%) worked in
mid- to large-sized organizations (with over
500 employees). The mean number of years
of
full-time work experience was 9 years
(SD=8.02), with 80% of the respondents
having worked in their current department
for 5–7 years.

Paper 2:
The final sample consisted of 200
undergraduate students enrolled in an
introductory marketing course at a large
urban university in the Southwest who
participated in the experiment for course
credit. (Originally, 236 usable
questionnaires were collected, with cell sizes
ranging from 25 to 36 respondents. Thirty-
six questionnaires were randomly excluded
from the final sample in order to minimize
the effects of unequal variance. The result
was a final sample of200, with equal cell
sizes of 25 respondents each.) This sample
was evenly split with respect to respondent
gender,100 females and 100 males. The
mean age was 22.78 years and the range was
18–44 years of age. One hundred twenty
five(62.5%) subjects were employed part-
time, 39 (19.5%)were employed full-time,
and 36 (18.0%) were not employed. Thus,
the sample was older and had more work
experience than the ‘‘traditional’’
undergraduate student.

Paper 3:
University students were considered to be an
appropriate as well as convenient subject
population. Three hundred and fifty four
students volunteered to serve as subjects in
the study(mean age=22).There were 190
females,146 males, and 18 subjects for
which information on sex was missing.
Subjects indicated they had ridden in a cab
an average of 8 times(range 0-300)
Comparison: From the above demographic
details, it becomes very much clear that
samples under study in all the three papers
constituted primarily students lying in the
age group 25-30.

Methodology-
Paper 1:
The survey instrument consisted of two
sections: (1) self-monitoring behavior and
(2) personal beliefs and attitudes about
attire. Demographic information was tapped
through several single item questions,
including gender, age, position level, years
of full-time work experience, tenure in
current department, size of organization, and
hours worked per week.
Self-Monitoring Behavior
This measure was developed by Gangestad
and Snyder (1985), consisting
of 18 items with a reported coefficient alpha
of .70
The response to each item is a true or false
option. Those with scores of 11 or greater
are considered high self-monitors and scores
of 10 and below are low self monitors.

Personal Beliefs and Attitudes about Attire

This section of the survey instrument

consisted of six measures:
(1)general clothing interest; (2) value of
workplace attire; (3) use of attire to
manage impressions; (4) appearance labor;
(5) beliefs regarding workplace
outcomes; and (6) self-perceptions. All
items in this section were
rated on a 5-point scale (1=Strongly
Disagree, 5=Strongly Agree).
The measure of general clothing interest
was developed by Kwon (1994) who
reported a coefficient alpha of .85 for this
four-item scale. The value of workplace
attire was measured with four items
developed by the
authors. The measure assesses the extent to
which one values others’perceptions of
one’s attire.
The use of attire to manage impressions
measure was developed by the authors,
using several items identified by Rafaeli and
Dutton (1997) regarding the use of clothing
for workplace objectives. The total measure
consisted of 7 items.

The appearance labor measure was

developed by the authors, using several
items identified by Rafaeli and Dutton
(1997) regarding the effort and planning
involved in dressing appropriately for work.
The total measure consisted of 8 items. Four
items measured the attention devoted to
planning and maintaining an appropriate
wardrobe for work, with regard to time,
money, physical effort and mental effort.
Four items measured the extent of dislike
involved in wearing or planning and
maintaining an appropriate wardrobe for
work, with regard to money, time, physical
effort and mental effort.

The measure for the beliefs

regarding impact of attire on
workplace outcomes was
developed by the authors,
consisting of 12 items. Four items
measured the belief that one’s
typical workplace attire would
positively impact the views of
others.
Two items measured the belief that
one’s typical workplace attire
would influence others. Six items
measured the belief that one’s
typical workplace attire would
positively impact work-related
outcomes.

Paper 2:
Experimental design and service context

The design of this research was a 2

(appropriate/inappropriate dress)_2
(high/low involvement)_2 (female/
male customers) between-subjects, full
factorial design.
The independent variables were dress,
involvement, and customer gender. Dress
and involvement were manipulated, while
customer gender was measured. The
dependent variables were firm-level service
quality expectations and purchase intent.

The service context for the experiment was

banking. Objective was to select a service
that would allow for the appropriate
manipulation of dress and involvement and
one that would not be considered extreme
with regards to dimensions used in service
classification schemes.

Manipulation of service contact personnel

dress
Service contact personnel dress was
manipulated as either appropriate or
inappropriate. In past research, dress has
been manipulated using one of four
methods: (1) drawings,
(2)photographs/slides, (3) live models/video
tapes of live models, and (4) written
descriptions (Davis and Lennon, 1988).
This study used colored photographs.

Manipulation of involvement

Involvement was varied as high or low by

having subjects read scenarios and imagine
that they were making a particular
investment decision

Dependent measures
Expectations of a firm’s
service quality were measured
using the expectations section of the
SERVQUAL scale

Experimental procedures

Classrooms were used as the setting for the

experiment,because they provided a
relatively controlled environment.
After participants entered the experimental
setting and were greeted, the experimenter
briefly addressed the subjects. The
participants were informed that their
responses would remain anonymous and
would be analyzed only at an aggregate
level. Each participant was randomly
assigned to one treatment only.
Paper 3:
Data were analysed using
multivariate analysis of variance and
Pearson’s product moment correlation.
Design
This study was a 2 by 2 between subjects
factorial design with two levels of clothing:
appropriate and inappropriate and two levels
of sex of subjects.
Instrument

Instrument
The instrument used to collect the
data was a semantic differential scale
consisting of three parts.The first part was
designed to measure interpretative
inferences about personality characteristics
of the taxicab driver. The second part was
designed to measure extended inferences
about taxicab driver’s abilities. The third
part was designed to measure extended
inferences about the city, acting as the
company, for which the taxicab driver
worked.

Procedures
In large group settings, subjects
were asked to participate in a research study.
Those individuals who agreed were given an
informed consent-form.The participants
were asked to indicate their inferences about
the taxicab driver and the city by circling a
number for each of the items contained in
the semantic differential scale.

Comparison
The three papers were
thus analysed on the basis of various scales
suited for their respective experimental
procedures. The first one was by calculating
scores on a scale consisting certain items.
The second one involved measuring the
dependent variable using SERVQUAL
scale. The third one used Semantic
differential scale.
Major Findings-
Paper 1:
Respondents were generally
interested in clothing placed a high value on
workplace attire and indicated a high interest
in using attire to manage the impressions of
others. Respondents demonstrated low self-
monitoring behavior. With regard to
appearance labor, respondents indicated that
some level of effort was devoted to planning
and maintaining their attire for work
Respondents strongly believed that their
attire affected other’s views of them
but saw their attire as less effective in
affecting their power/influence or work-
related outcomes Respondents generally felt
that their typical workplace attire influenced
their feelings of being dependable friendly
competent and productive. With regard
to work-related self-perceptions, general
clothing interest was significantly related to
the feeling of being competent but was not
found to be significantly related to any other
workplace emotion.
High self-monitors were
more likely than low self-monitors to
believe that their attire had a positive impact
on beliefs in workplace outcomes. High self-
monitors were more likely than low self-
monitors that their attire influenced their
feelings of competence high self-monitors
were more likely than low self-monitors to
demonstrate impression management
behaviors .Those using attire to impress
others were also more likely to believe that
their attire had an impact on workplace
outcomes. There was a significant positive
relationship between the use of attire to
impress others and four of the work-related
self-perceptions—dependable, friendly,
competent and productive. With regard to
appearance labor, the findings were mixed.
Respondents’ general clothing interest and
value of workplace attire were significantly
related to the effort they devoted to attire
Women were more likely than men
to devote effort to their attire and to have
greater interest in clothing. With regard to
position level, managers were more likely
than non-managers to report they devoted
more effort to their attire.

Paper 2:

When service contact personnel

were perceived to be appropriately dressed,
respondents had significantly higher
expectations of the firm’s service quality
than when service contact personnel were
thought to be inappropriately dressed
Results showed that, overall, the
appropriately dressed investment banker
was associated with stronger customer
purchase intent than was an investment
banker whom respondents perceived to be
inappropriately dressed. The result of
regression analysis revealed that the
relationship between expectations and
purchase intent was significant results
indicated that expectations serve as a partial
mediating variable in the relationship
between dress and purchase intent.
The effect of the banker’s dress on customer
expectations relating to service quality was
significantly stronger when the considered
investment was the less risky and relatively
less significant investment in US
Government bonds than when the
investment was in small cap stocks.
The appropriateness of the investment
banker’s dress had a greater impact on
customer purchase intentions when the
decision regarded a low involvement
investment vs. the more significant, higher
involvement investment.
The effect of the investment banker’s dress
on customer expectations relating to firm
service quality was significantly stronger for
female than for male customers.
Female customers expressed that they were
more likely to use the particular bank’s
services when they considered the banker
appropriately (vs. inappropriately) dressed
than were male customers.

Paper 3:
A two way multivariate analysis
revealed that inferences were not affected by
sex of subject. Inferences were however,
significantly influenced by clothing of the
driver.
 Univariate analysis revealed that
inferences about personality characteristics
were more favorable when the driver wore
appropriate clothing than when the driver
wore inappropriate clothing. Univariate
analysis revealed that extended inferences
about abilities were significantly influenced
by the clothing of the driver. Inferences
about the taxicab drivers’ abilities were
more favorable when the driver wore
appropriate clothing than when the driver
wore inappropriate clothing. Inferences
about the city were significantly more
favorable when the driver wore appropriate
clothing.

Comparisons
It is seen in all the three cases
that subjects place/attach great importance
to attire/clothing as a tool for forming good
impression and as a tool for non verbal
communication. Respondents in all the three
papers show a strong positive relationship
between appropriate clothing and its positive
impact.

Conclusions, Limitations,
Recommendations-
Paper 1:
Conclusion:
In general, the respondents in our sample
appeared to place significant value on
workplace attire and believe that it
positively impacts several workplace
outcomes. For individuals to see this link, it
is clear that organizations must be
recognizing and rewarding employee
attention to attire. Our findings suggest that
this appears to be of particular concern to
women. The fact that women, compared to
men, were more interested in clothing and
devoted significantly more resources
(physical, mental, and financial) to their
work wardrobe indicates that they see their
image as playing a critical part of their
career success.

Limitations
Future research needs to broaden the
scope, targeting a larger more experienced
sample from a broad range of occupations
and positions. Second, many of the measures
they used were created specifically for this
study. Additional studies are needed to
ascertain the validity of these measures.
Third, there are undoubtedly other
unmeasured variables that would greatly
increase our understanding of the how and
why individuals use their workplace attire in
impression management. For example, it is
possible that a highly political workplace
culture might prompt individuals to utilize a
wider range of resources, including attire,
to promote their image. A fourth limitation
is that, although they asked respondents
about their beliefs regarding their typical
workplace attire, they did not ask them to
describe their typical workplace attire.
Research should examine the impact of
various dress styles on employees’ attire
related beliefs and behaviors. Those
individuals who work in environments
where professional business attire is the
norm may be more likely to believe their
attire has an impact on workplace outcomes
than those who work in environments where
casual dress, uniforms, or corporate wear are
the norm.

Paper 2:
Conclusion:
This study provides the first empirical
evidence to date supporting the importance
of appropriateness of service employee dress
in consumers’ evaluations of service firms.
Not only are customers likely to judge
service employees themselves by their dress,
but customers are also likely to use contact
employee dress as cues to the quality of the
service firm itself.
Service managers should not take the issue
of what their contact employees
wear lightly. Appropriately dressed service
contact personnel lead to higher customer
expectations of firm service quality and
greater intention to purchase from that
organization than do inappropriately dressed
service contact personnel. Tangible cues,
such as contact employee dress, appear to be
important in the inference making
Appropriate dress (one of the tangible cues
in the service environment) resulted in
higher firm service quality expectations than
did inappropriate dress.
Limitations

The dress that is appropriate within one

professional context may not be appropriate
within another professional context. Though
the service category selected for this study,
retail banking, was ‘‘neutral’’ in key aspects
of the dimensions used in service
classification schemes caution should be
exercised when trying to interpret
the results of this study across different
service categories.
Another limitation comes from the use of
colored photographs rather than live models
as the method of presenting the dress
manipulation. The use of colored
photographs allowed the researchers more
control over the characteristics of the
models. However, while coloured
photographs are perceived to be more
realistic than drawings, they are less
realistic than live models or videotapes of
live models. Therefore , a certain degree of
realism was sacrificed.
The use of a student sample was a third
limitation. College students may have wider
zones of tolerance with regard to the
definition of ‘‘appropriateness of dress’’
than the general adult population. Thus, the
strengths of the relationships under
investigation might have been even stronger
with the use of a sample from the general
population.
Finally, this study used a laboratory
experiment to provide greater precision and
control for the study of relationships
between variables and therefore greater
internal validity. However , the experimental
research setting may reduce external
validity.

Paper 3:
Conclusion:
Results from this study indicate that a
positive appearance in this case appropriate
clothing, elicited favourable interpretative
inferences about the driver’s personality
characteristics and favorable extended
inferences about the driver’s abilities.Thus if
an individual forms a favorable inference
about the personality characteristics of
another person, based on that person’s
clothing, it is likely that the individual will
also form favorable extended inferences
about other non-observable aspects of the
person’s life, such as the person’s abilities.
Also, inferences made
about others on the basis of their clothing
extend beyond personal characteristics to
include characteristics of the company they
represent.
Comparative analysis (Based on Major
Findings and Conclusion/ Limitations/
Recommendations-
On the basis of study of the all the three
papers it can be said dress code and positive
wear generate only a positive response from
the minds of the observers/viewers of the
subject and all the three papers come to the
same conclusion that whatever be the
industry type, organization, backdrop,
environment, profession, etc.
appropriateness in dress creates a positive
impression and serves as an effective mode
of non-verbal communication enhancing
non-verbal communication capabilities of a
subject/person.

Bibliography

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