ATTRIBUTES OF CORPORATE DRESS CODE ON THE IMAGE OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN NIGERIA: A STUDY OF CALEB AND BABCOCK

This study investigates the attributes of corporate dress code on the image of private university students in Nigeria. The study addressed these objectives; to examine the perception of private university students on the reasons for the lack of interest in complying with the “corporate dress code”, to examine the perception of the students on the effects of corporate dressing on their image in their institution, to access the benefit of “corporate dress code” on the “image” of “private university students in Nigeria”. The theoretical framework of this study hinge upon the theory for planned behavior and diffusion of innovation theory as it believes perceived attributes of an innovation rather than the characteristics of the adopters, determine its adoption rate to a larger extent. The simple survey method was adopted as the research design and an online questionnaire containing ten (10) questions were used to elicit data on information from some students of Caleb University, Lagos State and Babcock University, Ogun State. 260 questionnaires were carefully distributed. Findings indicated that the policy of corporate dress code has more of a positive effect on the
image of the students and majority of the students lack interest in corporate dress code policy because the students feel restricted and cannot express themselves freely. Therefore this study recommends that the institution should institute policies that can as well reflect the student’s personality so that they do not feel discriminated, restricted, uncomfortable and not allowed self expression and the policy should be made flexible to allow balance between the hankering of self expression and professionalism of the students.