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The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of dress codes in professions. Since they can be considered as carriers of both organizational communication and individual identity, they will be central in professions as communities and through the professionalization process. Therefore, we will ask the following question: what is the role of understanding and complying with dress codes in becoming a professional?

The empirical study consists in a series of ethnographic interviews and observations aiming at understanding dress codes' roles and dynamics in financial professions.

Exploring dress codes in three typical professions in finance, we have discovered that they also are mediums of communication within the group, strengthening a certain aesthetic sense of belonging and of presenting the self.

In this, becoming a professional can be understood as an aesthetic experience through which all senses are involved. Considering professions as being also aesthetic communities shifts the focus – or rather enlarges it – toward symbolic, corporeal and sensorial elements.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Leadership & Organization Development Journal is split into four sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Culture, Change and Intervention; Management Styles and Techniques; Leadership and Decision; Communications.

Service uniforms have often been studied from the customers’ perspective, as they contribute to service expectations and evaluations. Proposes that the influence of uniform should also be considered from the service provider’s perspective. Discusses the first stage in the development of a 17‐item scale to assess service providers’ perceptions of their uniform. Identifies four dimensions of these perceptions: service approach, the look, customer influence and company identification. The emergence of the dimensions entitled service attitude and the look draws attention to issues concerned with how uniform wearers feel about themselves, and highlights the importance of the aesthetic uniform needs of the wearer. Suggests that management should give due consideration to uniform requirements as perceived by the service provider, as this is likely to impact positively on service employees and thus service orientation.

Nalini Ambady is a Professor at Tufts University's Psychology Department, and conducts research on interpersonal judgment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Arab women managers construct their social identities through the meanings they ascribe to their clothing while pursuing managerial careers.

An interview‐based qualitative approach is adopted for describing the meanings that the United Arab Emirates national women managers give to their clothing.

This paper identifies multiple coexisting identities in Arab women pursuing managerial careers. While the contradiction is found in the identity as a woman and as a manager, the normative dimensions of identity formation such as being a Muslim and an Emirati serve as enhancing for women's gendered managerial identity.

The value of this paper is twofold: first, contributes to the knowledge of the topic of Arab women in management which is understudied in academia; second, it particularly sheds light how women managers meaningfully use symbols, such as dress, to construct and perform gender realities in a career context.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a qualitative study of software engineers' perception of dress code, career, organizations, and of managers.

The software engineers interviewed work in three European and two US companies. The research is based on ethnographic data, gathered in two longitudinal studies during the period 2001‐2006. The methods used in the study include open‐ended unstructured interviews, participant observation, collection of stories, and shadowing.

It was found that the majority of software engineers denounce formal dress‐codes. The notion of career was defined by them mostly in terms of occupational development. They perceived their own managers as very incompetent. Their view on corporations was also univocally negative. The findings confirm that software engineers form a very distinctive occupation, defining itself in opposition to the organization. However, their distinctiveness may be perceived not only as a manifestation of independence but also contrarily, as simply fulfilling the organizational role they are assigned by management.

The study contributes to the organizational literature by responding to the call for more research on high‐tech workplace practices, and on non‐managerial occupational roles.

Anyone who has recently watched television or movies can tell you that transgender, gender nonbinary or gender expansive people are becoming more visible in these media. This trend reflects the reality that younger generations are increasingly identifying with more fluid and nonbinary gender and sexual identities and are progressively expressing those identities in a more flexible and changing manner (Herman et al., 2022; Wilson & Meyer, 2021). Unsurprisingly then, those individuals are also more visible at work, including in workplaces with employer-mandated dress codes. Indeed, in 2020 the US Supreme Court decided a case involving a transgender woman, Aimee Stephens, who was fired because her employer, a funeral home, required her to conform to its gender-binary dress policy and wear clothing mandatory for people assigned male at birth, rather than appropriate for her female gender identity ( Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020).

However, as the description of Aimee Stephens's own experience illustrates, often these employer appearance codes are based on a binary and fixed conception of gender and gender identity and expression at odds with the increasing number of workers who do not identify within those rigid parameters. Moreover, even when an employee, like Aimee Stephens herself, could have fit within her employer's dress code, the improper application of that policy to her, or employer concerns about customer or co-worker discomfort with an employee's appearance under the policy may mean that a worker's identity and expression may still conflict with a workplace appearance code. For gender nonbinary or nonconforming individuals, these complications are magnified.

This chapter explores the practical problems and barriers that employer dress codes have on employees whose gender identity and/or presentation move beyond the traditional male/female binary. Using insights from queer theory, gender expansive employees serve to interrogate fundamental assumptions behind workplace dress policies and the formal and informal ways in which these policies are policed. The chapter will explore that discordance, examine possible employer resolutions, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of those responses.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on scientific models in conceptualising the evolutionary bases of contemporary behaviours, and make cross‐species comparisons, to account for male managerial activities in situ in health organizations.

In the animal world, males of many species display in order to induce females to mate. Such lekking behaviour involves inter alia, strutting, puffing out, catching attention via the use of ornamental physical characteristics, exhibiting gaudily‐coloured body parts, singing or splashing, and other courting and wooing strategies. The paper applies these behavioural repertoires as an explanatory device for male‐dominant organizational lekking in a set of contemporary settings. It draws on six studies of managerial talk, appearance and behaviour in order to do so.

Within the organizational lek male managers display mainly by power dressing, positioning, and exercising power and influence via verbal and behavioural means. Social and religious mores prohibit overt sexual coupling in organizations but lekking for other rewards is nevertheless pursued by male managers. The paper explores this managerial patterning, compares it to the lekking behaviour of other species, and discusses points of comparison and departure. It shows how male managers display within various sub‐habitats, and discusses the central issues of appearance, tasks and work assignment, physical interaction structure, and talk and physiognomy.

Understanding what makes people tick via deep explanations than are customarily rendered is a vital contribution of scholarship to the practical world of management.

The evolutionary bases of contemporary behaviours, and cross‐species accounts, may prove useful paradigms for other theorists and empiricists in organizational studies, and could encourage the development of a new field that might be labeled evolutionary organizational behaviour.