Actually THAT'S a great example of "Face."
I work in Robotics and have been in auto plants all over the world. Toyota is famous in the industry for doing invisible recalls (I forget the proper term off hand). If you have a Ford, and some part is known to go wrong, they'd send you a letter to bring your car in for a fix. Toyota on the other hand waited until you brought your car in for maintenance, then they'd do the work and you wouldn't know anything about it. Your oil change just took longer and there were three guys doing it... it just auto/prints on the work order.
You'd think Ford makes crap because they called your car in for another fix, and Toyotas are great because they haven't. Until the lawsuits start from people who DON'T bring their cars into a Toyota dealer for work... and have been driving around with a known dangerous problem. "Face" doesn't always work. Sometimes you've got to stand up and say, we made a mistake... the Japanese aren't very good at that. It wasn't long ago when they'd kill themself for that kind of thing.
P.S. Toyota is Sony in the 90s... in a race to the bottom.
sorry, way off topic, but im actually majoring in electronics/control systems and graduate next semester. where are you located? id like to know a little more about working in the field too. id appreciate it if you could give me some advice or pointers. sorry everyone, back to topic...