Aesthetic-based competences lead to a sustainable learning practice: Re-thinking public management through the lens of sustainability

Purpose: The purpose of the article is to explore how aesthetic-based competences are developed in and through leaders’ organisational practice and how these competences may lead to a sustainable learning practice in everyday life in organisations. Design/methodology/approach: The article focuses on how aesthetic-based experiments can change leaders’ organisational practice, when instrumental rationality is transformed into aesthetic rationality. This happens when leaders learn to move the everyday drama, the so-called social drama, into an aesthetic drama in order to transform organisational habits and devastating paradigms. Findings: The study of how leaders learn to transform their practice, based on a study at Copenhagen Business School in the period 2014–2017, documents that leaders can learn aesthetic performance that transforms their organisational practice when the learning processes are integrated into everyday life. Originality/value: The combination of aesthetic performance and learning processes has potential for a lasting and sustainable transformation, when the learning concept is rooted in leaders’ organisational practice as a bodily embedded aesthetic rationality.