Wearing Your Worth at Work: The Consequences of Employees’ Daily Clothing Choices

Abstract

Do the clothes worn to work impact employees’ thoughts and behaviors? Despite the universal necessity of wearing clothes and the fact that employees make decisions about this daily, organizational scholars have not yet addressed this question. We integrated sociometer and enclothed cognition theories to propose that aspects of clothing—their aesthetics, normality, and uniqueness—hold abstract meanings that have implications for employees’ self-esteem and subsequent task and relational behaviors (i.e., goal progress, social avoidance). We further probed this effect by suggesting it would be strengthened on days when employees had more frequent interactions with others in the workplace. Results of a 10-day study of 85 employees from four organizations 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 normality emerged under the condition of greater interactions with others (interaction frequency also strengthened the effects of clothing aesthetics). Our manuscript contributes to both major theories from which we draw and further offers theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on organizational clothing.