WEARING YOUR WORTH AT WORK: THE CONSEQUENCES OF EMPLOYEES' DAILY CLOTHING CHOICES

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kim, Joseph k.; Holtz, Brian c.; Vogel, Ryan m.
• 署名单位: University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Chicago; University of Illinois Chicago Hospital; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Temple University
• 刊物名称: ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-4273
• DOI: 10.5465/amj.2021.1358
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 1411-1437
• 关键词: SELF-ESTEEM; Impression management; ENCLOTHED COGNITION; social exclusion; responses; need; personality; SOCIOMETER; MODEL; color

摘要

Do the clothes worn to work impact employees' thoughts and behaviors? Despite the uni-versal necessity of wearing clothes and the fact that employees make decisions about this daily, organizational scholars have not yet addressed this question. We integrate socio-meter and enclothed cognition theories to propose that aspects of clothing-their aes-thetics, conformity, and uniqueness-hold symbolic meanings that have implications for employees' state self-esteem and subsequent task and relational behaviors (i.e., goal pro-gress, social avoidance). We first provide evidence for the nature of the symbolic mean-ings associated with these three dimensions of work clothing in a set of within-person experimental studies. The results of a 10-day field study of employees from four organi-zations generally supported our predictions, showing that daily clothing aesthetics and uniqueness had effects on state self-esteem and downstream behavioral consequences. The effects of daily clothing conformity emerged under the condition of greater interac-tion frequency with others in the workplace. Our manuscript contributes to both major theories from which we draw, and further offers theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on organizational clothing.