Back in the late 1980s when I worked for Tandy Corporation (Radio Shack), they hired an IBM castoff to be a Senior VP. He immediately imposed a new dress code on all Tandy store employees and corporate managers. This even included employees out in little franchise Radio Shacks located in the desert or in the Ozarks. They insisted that we all use the then popular "Dress for Success" model (John T. Molloy, 1988) whether we ever met the public or not.
"Dress for Success" meant that you had to have the "IBM salesman look." Wool blend suits, white long-sleeved shirts, conservative ties. You had to cut your hair up over your ears, shave your sideburns above your earlobes, and lose all facial hair.
This caused a great deal of distress among African-American store managers since facial hair was very much in vogue within that community at the time. Plus many African-American men suffer from skin irritations due to shaving. In spite of numerous requests for waivers, the Tandy SrVP would not budge, not even for medical waivers. Several long-time managers were fired for not following the edict to the letter.
At the time Tandy Radio Shack was trying to compete with IBM in the computer sales and integration market. The market they were competing in included school districts, government entities, and small businesses. To Tandy upper management having the field sales teams dress in the IBM manner made sense. But Tandy's requirement also applied to service and repair people, headquarters support staff, and part-time Radio Shack store employees. That made no sense at all.
The Watchtower Society must have read that book around the same time, because it seemed that beards and mustaches became verboten around the early 1980s. I remember growing up that we had two or three middle-aged brothers that wore beards in my Kingdom Hall (1955-1965) and quite a few younger brothers had neatly trimmed mustaches. One brother looked like Santa Claus and a KH servant looked like James Mason as Captain Nemo in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."
After Tandy implemented its dress code, a major industry magazine (maybe Computer World) came out with an editorial article about the changes forced on Radio Shack employees. I think that what they wrote applies equally to elders and other male Jehovah's Witnesses that follow the Watchtower's dress codes:
"Let's face it, Radio Shack may be trying to make their male store managers and computer techs 'put on a new face' in an attempt to compete with IBM. But the truth is that a doofus without a beard is still a doofus..."
JV