Sybille Persson, Paul Shrivastava and Laszlo Zsolnai: “Art and Aesthetics in Sustainability Education. Insights into Beautifying Management Education with François Jullien” RIPCO (Revue Internationale de Psychosociologie et de Gestion des Comportements Organisationnels) Vol XXVII, Issue 71, 2021 pp. 75-98.
The paper questions the conceptual basis of art and aesthetics used in management education in order to foster sustainability education. Our specific approach is to open a dialogue with the Chinese conception of aesthetics, particularly focusing on its links to life and flourishing. In looking at different conceptions of beauty in Western and Chinese thoughts, we go over the dominant Western perspective. We provide a non-ethnocentric conception of beauty and offer relevant insights into beautifying management education.
Three stages mark this paper on the challenges of beauty in management in the context of sustainability. First, we present and analyze the living ARTEM case, a 20-year experience in higher education in France. Second, we question the Western concept of “beautiful” vis-à-vis the Chinese relational view of beauty as interpreted by philosopher and sinologist Francois Jullien. Finally, we analyze the potential of beauty to sustainably “enliven” management education. We suggest that beauty, can serve as an enlivenement process to beautify management and business education. Connivance works as a sensory and relational knowledge, especially adapted to better understand and mobilize aesthetics practices in sustainability education.