THE CONCEPT AND DYNAMICS OF FACE - IMPLICATIONS FOR ORGANIZATIONAL-BEHAVIOR IN ASIA

Research on cross-cultural psychology, sociology, and anthropology sug gests that the influence of face on social interactions is both pervas ive and powerful in Asia. Face, however, has not gained general accept ance as an important theoretical concept in the literature on Asian or ganizational behavior and management. In this paper, we propose face a s a key variable that can explain much of the complexity of social int eractions in Asian organizations. We attempted to elaborate on the con cept and dynamics of face in Asia in such a way as to capture its perv asive, significant but often subtle influences on organizational behav ior. We also examined conditions, functions, and consequences of face dynamics to generate testable propositions for future research. We arg ue that scholars have to go beyond the individualistic assumptions abo ut human behavior implicit in theories of organizational behavior in t he West to better understand the richness of organizational behavior i n Asia. In Asia, organizational behavior is better predicted by an ind ividual's external attributes such as face than internal attributes su ch as desires, emotions, and cognition.