“I got the business blues”: what organizations can learn from popular music?

As the link between sustainable development and art begins to shed a new light on organizational conceptions, this article considers popular music, and especially blues music. The conceptual process of the paper is to highlight the philosophical roots of Western aesthetics in order to propose a counterpoint based on popular and ordinary living sustained by popular music. By analyzing blues music as both a durable support and a natural process of everyday experience, we open a door to Chinese philosophy and psychology for HR Management based on the body-mind-spirit alignment. This perspective generates new and creative avenues for research in HR management, organizational theory, and business education. The major issue is then how to sensitize the ears of HRM so that it offers ‘vital nourishment’ in the workplace at a time when the cost of the depressive state of many an employee has become a proven risk.