Juan Worthman is the president of High-Tech Haven. He wants all his employees to dress professionally. At the monthly staff meeting, he talks about the effect of appearance on work performance. However, he does not want to create a dress code or enforce a rule concerning people's dress. Worthman appoints Jill Marinez, a manager, to get the employees to dress professionally or to achieve conformity without exerting power. How should Marinez accomplish this? List the characteristics of the situation she will need to take into account.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

To establish conformity to an unstated dress code, Marinez needs to consider several characteristics of the situation. People are more likely to conform in situations that are ambiguous. The managers could begin to dress professionally and recruit colleagues to do likewise. Each manager could give different, plausible reasons for his or her change in dress. These actions should create an ambiguous situation, and employees would be more likely to follow the new group norm. People experience great pressure to conform when the majority is all doing the same thing. If all the managers began to dress professionally, their united front would pressure the other employees to follow suit. If the employees believe that each manager independently arrived at the decision to dress professionally, then the more managers who did so, the greater the conformity would be.