Saving Face In Business

This book explains the subtle maneuvers of what researchers call “facework” and demonstrates the vital role it plays in the success or failure of cross-cultural interactions. Building on Geert Hofstede’s seminal research on cultural dimensions, Merkin synthesizes more recent research in business, communication, cross-cultural psychology and sociology to offer a model for better understanding facework. Additionally, Merkin’s model shows how particular communication strategies can facilitate more successful cross-cultural interactions. The first book of its kind to focus on the practical aspects of employing face-saving, it is a needed text for academics, students, and business professionals negotiating with organizations from different cultures.

“Maya Hu-Chan shares a blueprint for becoming a more empathetic, self-aware, and inclusive leader. Saving Face guides us to consider different perspectives, to think first and speak last, and to respect others above all else.” —Frances Hesselbein, former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Organizations now need to attract, retain, and motivate teams and employees across distance, time zones, and cultural differences. Building authentic and lasting human relations may be the most important calling for leaders in this century. According to management and global leadership specialist Maya Hu-Chan, the concept of “saving face” can help any leader preserve dignity and create more empathetic cross-cultural relationships. “Face” represents one's self-esteem, self-worth, identity, reputation, status, pride, and dignity. Saving face is often understood as saving someone from embarrassment, but it's also about developing an understanding of the background and motivations of others to discover the unique facets we all possess. Without that understanding, we risk causing others to lose face without even knowing it. Hu-Chan explains saving face through anecdotes and practical tools, such as her BUILD leadership model (Benevolence, Understanding, Interacting, Learning, and Delivery). This book illustrates how we can give face to create positive first impressions, avoid causing others to lose face, and, most importantly, build trust and lasting relationships inside and outside the workplace.

Easy to read and full of humor, this useful and entertaining guide will be invaluable to anyone working in China or with Chinese. It deals with an essential element of social codes in China: the importance of "saving face." The author brings up this sensitive subject by presenting many real life experiences and anecdotes of Chinese and foreigners (Europe and North America) interacting with each other. It provides an important tool in building good relations and efficient communication with the Chinese, offers helpful tips and provides a basic knowledge of the most important aspects of etiquette and customs in China. The advice offered is straightforward and easy to apply both in daily life and in business.

Who was the first goaltender to wear a mask in a game? Who was the last to go without one? When did goalies start painting their masks? These are just a few of the questions that are answered in this definitive book on goalie masks. Saving Face looks at the development of the mask from its earliest days as a rudimentary face-saving device to its current high-tech design, bullet-proof construction, and cutting-edge artwork. The book offers a visual journey, too. More than 150 historic and modern photos, including thirty-plus full-page shots of some of the most famous masks ever created, support a text that weaves the tale of the mask’s development. Based on extensive archival research and exclusive interviews, Saving Face tells the story of the goalies behind the mask and their fight for the right to wear one. It also looks at the talented mask makers, artisans, and artists behind hockey’s modern masterpieces. This updated edition includes masks worn by some of the most exciting stars in the game today. While goaltenders the world over owe a debt of thanks to those who created, developed, championed, and continuously improved the mask, hockey fans everywhere are thankful, too. For the mask today has gone far beyond its original function—saving face—to become the most intriguing piece of equipment in sports. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Faces are all around us and fundamentally shape both everyday experience and our understanding of people. To lose face is to be alienated and experience shame, to be enfaced is to enjoy the fullness of life. In theology as in many other disciplines faces, as both physical phenomena and symbols, have not received the critical, appreciative attention they deserve. This pioneering book explores the nature of face and enfacement, both human and divine. Pattison discusses questions concerning what face is, how important face is in human life and relationships, and how we might understand face, both as a physical phenomenon and as a series of socially-inflected symbols and metaphors about the self and the body. Examining what face means in terms of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary human society and how it is related to shame, Pattison reveals what the experience of people who have difficulties with faces tell us about our society, our understandings of, and our reactions to face. Exploring this ubiquitous yet ignored area of both contemporary human experience and of the Christian theological tradition, Pattison explains how Christian theology understands face, both human and divine, and the insights might it offer to understanding face and enfacement. Does God in any sense have a physically visible face? What is the significance of having an enfaced or faceless God for Christian life and practice? What does the vision of God mean now? If we want to take face and defacing shame seriously, and to get them properly into perspective, we may need to change our theology, thought and practice - changing our ways of thinking about God and about theology.

In Japan, evidence of the country's Westernization abounds, yet despite appearances, it has remained "uniquely" Japanese. For this reason, the uninformed Westerner doing business there will find it difficult and even frustrating to work with Japanese unless he or she gains a good understanding of Japan and its people. The author draws on his extensive bilingual and bicultural experience to provide readers with an insightful look at many key aspects of doing business with Japan, ranging from initiating and maintaining business contacts, effective interpersonal communication, decision-making styles, negotiation tactics, presentational speaking, working of Japanese multinational companies, and living and working in Japan. Businesspeople, academics, non-academics, students, and others who are interested in learning how to communicate effectively and successfully with Japanese in international business contexts will benefit from the author's sound recommendations and advice.

Tiger Mom. Asian patriarchy. Model minority children. Generation gap. The many images used to describe the prototypical Asian family have given rise to two versions of the Asian immigrant family myth. The first celebrates Asian families for upholding the traditional heteronormative ideal of the “normal (white) American family” based on a hard-working male breadwinner and a devoted wife and mother who raises obedient children. The other demonizes Asian families around these very same cultural values by highlighting the dangers of excessive parenting, oppressive hierarchies, and emotionless pragmatism in Asian cultures. Saving Face cuts through these myths, offering a more nuanced portrait of Asian immigrant families in a changing world as recalled by the people who lived them first-hand: the grown children of Chinese and Korean immigrants. Drawing on extensive interviews, sociologist Angie Y. Chung examines how these second-generation children negotiate the complex and conflicted feelings they have toward their family responsibilities and upbringing. Although they know little about their parents’ lives, she reveals how Korean and Chinese Americans assemble fragments of their childhood memories, kinship narratives, and racial myths to make sense of their family experiences. However, Chung also finds that these adaptive strategies come at a considerable social and psychological cost and do less to reconcile the social stresses that minority immigrant families endure today. Saving Face not only gives readers a new appreciation for the often painful generation gap between immigrants and their children, it also reveals the love, empathy, and communication strategies families use to help bridge those rifts.

Winner, Body and Embodiment Award presented by the American Sociological Association Imagine yourself without a face--the task seems impossible. The face is a core feature of our physical identity. Our face is how others identify us and how we think of our 'self'. Yet, human faces are also functionally essential as mechanisms for communication and as a means of eating, breathing, and seeing. For these reasons, facial disfigurement can endanger our fundamental notions of self and identity or even be life threatening, at worse. Precisely because it is so difficult to conceal our faces, the disfigured face compromises appearance, status, and, perhaps, our very way of being in the world. In Saving Face, sociologist Heather Laine Talley examines the cultural meaning and social significance of interventions aimed at repairing faces defined as disfigured. Using ethnography, participant-observation, content analysis, interviews, and autoethnography, Talley explores four sites in which a range of faces are "repaired:" face transplantation, facial feminization surgery, the reality show Extreme Makeover, and the international charitable organization Operation Smile,. Throughout, she considers how efforts focused on repair sometimes intensify the stigma associated with disfigurement. Drawing upon experiences volunteering at a camp for children with severe burns, Talley also considers alternative interventions and everyday practices that both challenge stigma and help those seen as disfigured negotiate outsider status. Talley delves into the promise and limits of facial surgery, continually examining how we might understand appearance as a facet of privilege and a dimension of inequality. Ultimately, she argues that facial work is not simply a conglomeration of reconstructive techniques aimed at the human face, but rather, that appearance interventions are increasingly treated as lifesaving work. Especially at a time when aesthetic technologies carrying greater risk are emerging and when discrimination based on appearance is rampant, this important book challenges us to think critically about how we see the human face.