Picture this. Your telephone rings at 1:55pm. The call is from the person with whom you have a 2:00pm appointment. He has to cancel your meeting. Suddenly, you have an hour free. How should you spend that hour? You could focus on:
- New ways to improve the application integration process.
- Figuring out what to do about some new IT managers who were talented staff members but who aren’t making the transition to leadership well.
- Deciding who needs to be part of the ERP system selection committee.
- Writing a twenty-page dress code.
I’m still trying to figure out how any executive in a 21st century enterprise could have the time to worry about writing any dress code more complicated than the one used by General Mills, reported here last week, which says, “Dress for your day.”
Still, there are plenty of executives who become downright excitable about this issue. Supporting them is a widely cited study by Dr. Jeffrey L. Magee, who surveyed 500 firms of varying size. According to published summaries of his research, Dr. Magee found a wide variety of deleterious effects result from a move to business casual:
- Decrease in ethical behavior.
- Decrease in polite, mannerly behavior.
- Increase in gutter language and conversation.
- Decrease in morality.
- Increase in provocative actions.
- Decrease in productivity and overall quality of work.
- Decrease in commitment and company loyalty.
- Increase in complaints to HR.
- Increase in litigation.
- Increase in tardiness.
I’m skeptical, in part because the phrasing used in describing these results strongly suggests methodological bias. I’d be interested, for example, in finding out who’s judging whom, and how, with respect to what constitutes polite, mannerly behavior. It would be unsurprising if the underlying issue is reduced deference to those in positions of authority. This might be a consequence of a move to business casual. If so, it’s a benefit. In my experience, reduced deference is good for those in authority. It helps them avoid the misguided sense of infallibility that infests so many executive suites.I also have to wonder just how casual attire links to an increase in “gutter language.” And to anticipate the inevitable wisecrack, yes, I’d be wondering even had former CEO Dick Cheney not used the effenheimer while wearing an expensive suit and tie.The decrease in morality is also suspect. Most likely the subject is revealing clothing as worn by low-level female employees rather than insider trading and fraud as practiced by high-level executives — a different form of immorality closely associated with custom-tailored suits and expensive silk ties.
As for the reduction in commitment and company loyalty, oh please. This is a direct result of several decades in which U.S. corporations have increasingly and with increasing openness treated employees as fungible commodities. To the extent there’s a correlation between this and the non-wearing of suits, it’s more likely that formal clothing is symptomatic of a culture of subservience than that casual attire causes disloyalty.
It turns out, by the way, that Dr. Magee isn’t responsible for these published summaries and is concerned that they’ve oversimplified his findings. His research was confidential, on behalf of several large clients, so he couldn’t share the details — it was one of the clients that provided information to the business press. He did say, in response to my inquiry, that his research dealt exclusively with externally-facing positions and had been inappropriately generalized to cover internal functions as well; he finds the case for business formal attire in internal positions to be far less compelling. And in fact, while Dr. Magee holds a strong opinion that how you dress has a significant impact on how you behave, he also advocates “situational attire.”
(Me too: I wore a suit and tie for the photo accompanying this column; I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt as I write it in my home office.)
Certainly, there is no sharp, bright line separating appropriate business casual dress from inappropriate sloppiness or overly revealing clothing. So what: Most issues in our lives are defined by continuums and gradations, not binary criteria that establish unambiguous boundaries.
There’s little question that a rigid dress code makes managers’ lives a bit easier, in much the same way that zero-tolerance policies simplify the lives of school principals. They’re examples of a popular principle:
When you’re incapable of providing leadership or exercising good judgment, substitute an inflexible policy.