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The purpose of this study is to examine the role of collective angst, the concern about the future viability of one’s group, during service failure and recovery.

To test this objective the authors utilize an experiment to examine how Kuwaitis react to service failures when the front-line employee is a foreigner.

The results indicate that collective angst is associated with greater anger following a service failure. The authors also find that collective angst moderates the impact of cultural distance on anger and recommendation intentions following a service-failure recovery attempt. More specifically, cultural distance leads to greater anger and lower intentions to recommend a service establishment for consumers that experience greater collective angst.

The research provides the first attempt at examining how local consumers react to foreigner service providers, by examining how concern about the future vitality of one’s national group, in other words collective angst, affects such reactions.

Throughout history, from ballads to requiems, music has played an important social role in reflection on mortality. Not only do musicians articulate their angst and thoughts about death, but, in so doing, they enable listeners to explore their own feelings. While the relationship between music and mental health can be examined from a number of perspectives, two broad approaches can be taken: artist-centred approaches and listener-centred approaches. The first analyses the life and work of artists, focussing particularly on the ways in which they explore death and angst in their music. The second looks at the ways in which the life and work of an artist is interpreted by listeners. Within these general approaches, a complex set of questions emerge – often at the interface of both approaches. How is the music used by listeners in their reflection on mortality? How is music used to manage mental health? Does reflection on the life and work of an artist contribute to suicidal ideation? Is the reception of music altered by an artist’s suicide? Using both these approaches and drawing particularly on the work of Émile Durkheim, this discussion demonstrates the significance of popular music analysis for death studies, focussing particularly on the issues surrounding popular music’s relationship to suicidal ideation.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the myths and challenges in the field of organizational ethnography and methodological angst.

This paper is initially written as an invited keynote address for the 3rd Annual Joint Symposium on “Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences” (University of Liverpool Management School and Keele University Institute for Public Policy and Management, Liverpool, September 3‐5, 2008). It explores what might be distinctive about organizational ethnography and how that might be different from “anthropological” ethnography. In particular, it engages a kind of collective methodological performance anxiety among organizational studies scholars without formal training in anthropology who do ethnographic research.

The paper argues that it is time to be explicit about a variety of forms of professional angst that many ethnographic researchers within organizational studies carry which have not been discussed.

The paper is of value to those willing to consider the myths and challenges that need engaging and perhaps uprooting and casting off.