Staying Without Sustainability: How Everyday Governance Reshapes Teachers’ Work in Private Higher Education in China

Abstract

This study explores how teachers’ work sustainability is shaped through everyday governance practices within private higher education institutions in China. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, the analysis draws on long-term fieldwork and in-depth interviews with teachers, administrators, leaders, and students from two private colleges. The findings suggest that teachers’ difficulties do not stem from isolated adverse incidents, but rather from an ongoing organizational process embedded in routine management practices. Evaluation-centered promotion systems, relationship-based governance, and data-driven oversight interact to restructure how teaching work is organized, recognized, and assessed. Professional contributions are frequently treated as negotiable outcomes subject to managerial discretion, while informal alignment practices and selective monitoring gradually narrow teachers’ space for professional judgment and initiative. Despite accumulating dissatisfaction, most teachers remain in their positions. Occupational identity, social expectations, and constrained labor mobility limit realistic exit options, transforming short-term accommodation into prolonged endurance. In this context, teacher retention reflects not organizational stability, but the persistence of governance conditions that challenge the long-term sustainability of teachers’ work. By examining how routine management practices gradually reshape teachers’ work, this study highlights an overlooked dimension of sustainability in higher education: the long-term viability of teachers’ professional lives within existing governance arrangements. Unlike studies that conceptualize teachers’ difficulties through the lens of workplace bullying or interpersonal conflict, this study focuses on how ordinary governance practices shape long-term work sustainability without overt confrontation.

1. Introduction

Research Necessity and Purpose

In recent years, sustainability research has shifted its focus beyond a narrow emphasis on macro-level resources and policy frameworks, increasingly turning its attention to the sustainability of human resources and working conditions within organizations. This shift is particularly evident in the field of education, where teachers’ emotional labor management, professional autonomy, and the institutional protection of working conditions have been identified as critical factors for sustaining educational systems over time [1,2,3]. This development reflects a deeper understanding of sustainability, emphasizing that the long-term stability of a system depends not only on external environments or formal institutional arrangements, but also on the capacity of its internal core actors—teachers—to maintain well-being and professional development over time [4,5,6]. Within this framework, teachers’ emotional labor management, professional autonomy, and the institutional protection of working conditions emerge as central components of human sustainability. Emotional labor has become a focal issue in contemporary educational research, given its significant impact on teacher well-being. Teaching is inherently a high-emotional-demand occupation, requiring continuous emotional regulation to meet professional expectations in instructional and relational contexts [2,3]. When teachers’ professional energy is persistently depleted without adequate institutional replenishment, organizations face a serious risk of an ‘erosion of the human resource base’ [7,8]. This risk is particularly acute in education, where the long-term maintenance of educational quality relies heavily on sustained teacher engagement, professional autonomy, and emotional labor. If teachers’ working conditions are continually undermined at the institutional and governance levels, educational organizations may appear stable on the surface while their internal human foundations are gradually depleted, thereby generating latent sustainability risks [9]. Although teachers’ emotional labor can enhance teaching effectiveness, the absence of institutional support often results in psychological exhaustion and occupational burnout [10]. In contrast, organizational support, positive social relationships, meaningful work, and an appropriate degree of professional autonomy are key resources for sustaining teacher well-being and professional engagement [11]. The institutional protection of working conditions constitutes another core pillar of educational sustainability, encompassing reasonable workloads, supportive work environments, opportunities for professional development, and systematic attention to teachers’ physical and mental health [12]. Existing research on teacher stress, turnover, and workplace conflict has tended to treat teacher retention as the primary indicator of organizational stability [13]. However, this assumption overlooks an important alternative scenario: teachers may remain in unfavorable working environments not because of identification or satisfaction, but due to institutional constraints, occupational attachment, or limited external opportunities. Under such conditions, apparent workforce stability does not indicate the sustainability of teachers’ work; rather, it may conceal enduring governance problems. Crucially, this form of unsustainability should not be attributed to individual incapacity or maladaptation. Instead, it represents an organizational outcome that is continuously produced and normalized through everyday management practices under specific governance and evaluation logics [14,15,16,17,18,19,20].

Against the backdrop of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Chinese teachers are confronted with multiple structural challenges in the pursuit of sustainable development. These challenges not only affect individual teachers’ career trajectories but also have profound implications for educational quality and educational equity [21]. Within China’s higher education system, private higher education has become an indispensable component, accounting for approximately one-third of all higher education graduates nationwide [22,23]. However, compared with their counterparts in public universities, teachers in private higher education institutions remain in a relatively disadvantaged position in terms of labor protection, employment stability, and institutional support. Relevant legal and regulatory frameworks remain underdeveloped, and the overall level of protection is notably weaker [24]. At the organizational level, private higher education institutions in China are commonly characterized by highly centralized governance structures. Decision-making power is concentrated in the hands of a small group of managers, and top-down management models substantially constrain teachers’ participation in institutional arrangements and pedagogical decision-making [25]. Under such conditions, when evaluation pressure and performance-based assessment are continuously intensified while formal grievance mechanisms and institutional support remain limited, teachers are more likely to interpret silence as a rational form of self-protection, aimed at avoiding potential conflict, punishment, or career-related risks. Although silence and compliance may contribute to short-term organizational stability, they can simultaneously weaken feedback mechanisms and corrective capacities, allowing problematic governance practices to be normalized and reproduced in everyday organizational life [26]. Under the combined influence of market-oriented governance, evaluation-driven management, and limited labor protection, teachers are increasingly positioned within contexts marked by power asymmetry, restricted occupational mobility, and heightened risks associated with voice and expression. While performance-oriented governance and evaluation pressure are by no means absent from public universities in China, private higher education institutions are distinguished by the cumulative effect of several structural conditions. These include stronger market pressures, board-dominated governance driven by profit-oriented logics, the absence of tenure-based employment arrangements, and comparatively weak institutional grievance and protection mechanisms [26,27]. In practice, teachers in private universities often encounter greater difficulties in defending their rights when disputes arise, which further undermines their sense of occupational security and institutional trust [26]. From a governance perspective, private higher education institutions typically embody multiple, and sometimes conflicting, organizational logics, encompassing educational, public-interest, and profit-oriented imperatives [25]. This hybridity contributes to the complexity and fragility of their governance structures. Existing studies have repeatedly pointed to structural deficiencies in the corporate governance of private universities, such as excessive concentration of power within boards of directors (or trustees) and weak internal oversight mechanisms [28,29]. In this sense, private higher education should not be treated as an ‘exceptional’ or marginal case. Rather, within the broader expansion of evaluation-based governance across Chinese higher education, private universities constitute a critical organizational setting in which the impacts of evaluation-based governance on teachers’ human sustainability are particularly intensified and rendered more visible.

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. Human Sustainability and the Sustainability of Teachers’ Work

As sustainability research has continued to deepen, scholars have increasingly recognized that the sustainability of organizations and institutional systems depends not only on the efficiency of resource allocation or levels of performance output, but also on whether individuals can sustain their physical and psychological well-being, professional capacity, and sense of work meaning over the long term [30,31]. Against this background, human sustainability has emerged as a key analytical concept in sustainability research. Rather than focusing on short-term job satisfaction or subjective well-being, this perspective centers on whether individuals, within existing organizational structures and institutional arrangements, are able to remain engaged in their work over time without being systematically overexhausted [32]. Ref. [32] argue that human sustainability extends conventional sustainability frameworks that are primarily concerned with financial and environmental indicators by foregrounding individuals as core organizational resources. From this standpoint, the long-term maintenance of psychological capacity, professional competence, and the ability to act meaningfully at work constitutes a foundational condition for achieving sustainable organizational outcomes. When organizational functioning relies heavily on individuals’ continuous emotional labor, responsibility-taking, and self-regulation, yet fails to provide corresponding institutional support, recovery mechanisms, or legitimate spaces for expression, individual work investment becomes difficult to replenish or reproduce at the institutional level. Under such conditions, even if organizations appear stable in the short term—maintaining workforce retention and meeting performance targets—their internal human resource base may be gradually eroded through everyday practices, resulting in a form of unsustainability characterized by surface stability and internal depletion [33]. Importantly, this condition should not be attributed to individual inadequacy or failed adaptation. Rather, it reflects a structurally embedded risk to human sustainability that is closely linked to specific governance logics and managerial practices through which work is organized, evaluated, and normalized over time.

Human sustainability risks are particularly salient in educational contexts. Educational work relies heavily on teachers’ sustained professional judgment, emotional investment, and the ongoing balancing of multiple roles. Beyond instructional tasks, teachers are required to continuously regulate emotions in interactions with students, parents, and administrative systems [2,10]. Existing studies indicate that emotional labor can enhance teaching quality and student experience; however, when such labor is persistently unsupported at the institutional level, it is likely to translate into psychological exhaustion, occupational burnout, and a gradual decline in work meaning [10,34]. Within this process, professional autonomy constitutes a critical institutional resource for human sustainability. When teachers retain a meaningful degree of autonomy, their professional judgments regarding instructional content, pedagogical methods, and classroom decision-making are more likely to be recognized, thereby supporting long-term professional identity and work meaning [3,35]. Conversely, when professional autonomy is continuously constrained by organizational arrangements, teachers may experience a deterioration of the psychological contract and increasing uncertainty regarding career stability and future development, which undermines their capacity for sustained professional engagement (Jiang et al., 2025) [36]. Empirical research on teachers in Chinese vocational institutions further suggests that organizational support does not operate directly on emotional labor itself, but rather through the mediation of professional identity, with work–life balance playing an important moderating role [35]. These findings underscore that professional autonomy and related experiences are not merely individual psychological outcomes, but institutionally shaped occupational resources [37]. From a human sustainability perspective, whether teachers remain in their positions is insufficient as an indicator of educational sustainability. More critical is whether teachers’ emotional resources, professional autonomy, and scope for action can be institutionally supported and reproduced over time [38,39]. Teacher sustainability, therefore, should not be understood as a matter of individual adaptation, but as a structural issue embedded within specific governance arrangements and managerial logics. This institutional dimension is most visibly manifested in evaluation-based governance mechanisms that structure everyday work practices. Governance structures do not merely affect organizational efficiency; they actively shape evaluative criteria, power distribution, and expressive boundaries, thereby influencing teachers’ capacity to sustain professional agency and psychological resources over the long term. In this study, human sustainability is not conceptualized as the absence of fatigue or dissatisfaction, but as an analytical lens for examining how teachers’ professional capacities, action spaces, and work meaning are gradually eroded under particular governance conditions without becoming overtly visible. The findings indicate that in organizational environments characterized by highly centralized evaluation systems and elevated expressive risk, teachers tend to maintain positional stability through silence, compliance, and the downward adjustment of professional expectations. This process should not be reduced to individual psychological coping; rather, it represents a form of structural adjustment. It is precisely in this sense that a tension emerges between ‘staying’ and ‘sustainability’, while teachers remain within the organization, their professional judgment, innovative practices, and emotional engagement are not institutionally reproduced [40,41,42]. Human sustainability thus provides a critical framework for understanding how evaluation-based governance can gradually erode the internal vitality of educational organizations without triggering overt conflict.

2.2. Governance Structures, Power Asymmetry, and Evaluation-Based Control in Educational Organizations

Organizational and educational governance research consistently emphasizes that individuals’ workplace experiences are not determined solely by personal competence or professional attitudes but are deeply embedded in specific governance structures and power relations [13]. Governance structures shape not only resource allocation and decision-making processes, but also individuals’ scope of action, boundaries of expression, and assessments of risk within organizations [17]. In educational institutions, hierarchical and top-down governance arrangements are widespread, with management holding dominant authority over teaching assignments, performance evaluations, and promotion decisions, while teachers often lack meaningful participation in matters that directly affect their work [43]. When teachers are excluded from key decision-making processes, their professional judgment and labor contributions are more likely to be disregarded, thereby weakening their trust in organizational fairness and institutional legitimacy [44,45]. Empirical studies further indicate that Chinese educational organizations typically operate under a clearly stratified, top-down control model, in which decision-making authority and information flow predominantly from upper management to frontline staff [46]. Within such structures, evaluation and promotion systems function as central mechanisms of power. Under conditions of limited transparency and restricted feedback channels, performance evaluations tend to shift from tools intended to support professional development into routinized instruments of control [47,48,49]. Importantly, these evaluation mechanisms extend beyond formal assessment moments and become embedded in everyday work practices through continuous monitoring, indicator comparison, and anticipatory accountability, prompting teachers to engage in ongoing self-regulation and risk avoidance [50,51]. In this context, teachers gradually become aware of the potential costs associated with expressing dissent or challenging existing arrangements, rendering silence and compliance relatively rational response strategies [52,53]. In the Chinese educational context, high power distance and hierarchical cultural orientations further legitimize managerial authority, making evaluation-centered control mechanisms appear natural and unquestionable [54]. Long-standing Confucian cultural norms emphasizing hierarchy, obedience to authority, and the maintenance of interpersonal harmony may further amplify power asymmetries embedded in governance structures, thereby facilitating the internalization and reproduction of evaluation-based governance among teachers [55,56].

As illustrated in Figure 1, governance structures in Chinese private higher education institutions are typically highly hierarchical, with decision-making authority concentrated at the managerial level and evaluation and accountability responsibilities transmitted downward along administrative chains. This structural configuration provides the organizational conditions for evaluation systems to operate continuously in everyday management. Consequently, evaluation practices do not merely regulate teachers’ behavior, but also shape their perceptions of professional autonomy, emotional investment, and long-term career sustainability. In this sense, evaluation-based governance constitutes a key mechanism for understanding the phenomenon of ‘staying without sustainability,’ whereby teachers remain within organizations while their professional capacities and human sustainability are gradually eroded.

2.3. Silence, Compliance, and Structural Coping

In organizational environments characterized by pronounced power asymmetries and highly centralized evaluation systems, individuals do not necessarily respond to adverse conditions through open confrontation or voluntary exit. Prior research indicates that when voicing dissent is associated with risks such as negative evaluations, deteriorating interpersonal relations, or restricted career opportunities, silence is often perceived as a safer course of action rather than an endorsement of unfair arrangements [57,58]. In this sense, silence should not be understood as passivity or indifference, but as a rational choice grounded in risk assessment. Compliance frequently intertwines with silence and becomes a key strategy through which individuals maintain their organizational positions in contexts marked by high uncertainty. Existing studies further suggest that when exit costs are high, alternative opportunities are limited, or institutional protections are weak, individuals are more likely to cope with organizational pressure by accepting existing arrangements, reducing the frequency of expression, or avoiding conflict [59]. Such behaviors do not imply genuine agreement with organizational rules; rather, they reflect a form of passive rationality shaped by structural constraints, aimed at minimizing short-term risks and preserving basic occupational stability [60,61]. Within the context of China’s educational reforms, research has shown that under highly centralized evaluation regimes and hierarchical power structures, collective silence and avoidance have gradually become common coping strategies among educational staff [62]. Rather than attributing silence to individual dispositions or cultural traits alone, this phenomenon is more accurately understood as a rational adaptation to specific governance arrangements. In recent years, teachers’ professional roles in Chinese higher education have increasingly shifted from identities centered on academic expertise and educational commitment toward evaluation-oriented roles emphasizing performance metrics and managerial efficiency [17]. This transformation has further reinforced compliance tendencies within evaluation-dominated systems. From a human sustainability perspective, such structurally conditioned responses—marked by silence and compliance—may help individuals maintain organizational membership and short-term stability, yet they simultaneously erode professional agency, emotional resources, and long-term career development capacity. As a result, educational organizations may exhibit surface-level stability while their human foundations are progressively depleted.

Importantly, governance structures influence teachers’ work not only through direct resource allocation but also by continuously shaping evaluation logics, risk expectations, and boundaries of expression. Through these mechanisms, teachers’ modes of action are gradually reconfigured, with enduring consequences for the sustainability of their professional competence, emotional investment, and sense of work meaning.

2.4. Research Questions

Accordingly, this study takes teachers’ everyday work experiences as its analytical starting point and focuses on understanding processual mechanisms rather than evaluating governance outcomes or effectiveness. The aim is to examine how evaluation-based governance operates in daily organizational practices and shapes teachers’ work experiences and professional positions within the context of Chinese private higher education. Based on the theoretical framework outlined above, the study is guided by the following research questions:

RQ1: How do teachers in Chinese private higher education institutions perceive and interpret institutional arrangements, evaluation mechanisms, and power relations through their everyday work experiences?

RQ2: When confronted with unfavorable working conditions, evaluation pressure, and limited external opportunities, how do teachers assess their situations and gradually develop coping strategies characterized by silence, compliance, or self-restraint in their daily practices?

RQ3: How do governance conditions within educational organizations and teachers’ coping strategies interact through everyday interactions, managerial practices, and evaluation processes, thereby contributing to the ongoing reproduction of existing work conditions?

3. Methodology

3.1. Research Approach

This study takes the long-term work experiences of teachers in Chinese private higher education institutions as its analytical starting point and examines how teachers understand, respond to, and adjust to their work situations in everyday practice under conditions of corporatized governance and performance-oriented management. Rather than evaluating work outcomes or the effectiveness of governance arrangements, the study adopts a process-oriented perspective to explore how teachers’ work conditions evolve within specific organizational governance contexts and how meanings are constructed through these experiences. To examine these processes in depth, this study employs Constructivist Grounded Theory as its primary methodological approach. Constructivist grounded theory emphasizes that research findings are not derived deductively from pre-existing theories but are gradually generated through sustained interaction between the researcher and participants, involving continuous comparison, reflexive engagement, and interpretive analysis of lived experiences [63]. In this study, grounded theory is not treated as a predetermined analytical framework or a variable-driven model. Instead, it functions as a set of analytical principles that guide the researcher in examining how teachers perceive, interpret, and respond to their work situations within specific governance and evaluation environments, without imposing theoretical conclusions in advance [64].

3.2. Fieldwork and Data Collection

To gain an in-depth understanding of teachers’ everyday work experiences within routine organizational operations, this study conducted sustained fieldwork over six months. The fieldwork was carried out in 2025 at two private higher education institutions located in the same city in China. While the two institutions were similar in organizational type and governance structure, they were affiliated with different educational groups and operated under separate management teams responsible for day-to-day administration. Before the commencement of fieldwork, informed consent was obtained from institutional administrators at both sites. All participants were informed of the research purpose, and strict anonymization procedures were applied in accordance with established research ethics standards. During the fieldwork period, participant observation constituted a primary data source. The researcher accumulated approximately 180 h of observation notes, covering a range of organizational settings, including teaching-related administrative meetings, faculty research and work meetings, classroom observations, and teachers’ everyday interactions in offices and shared public spaces. Through sustained participation in these activities, the researcher gradually developed familiarity with institutional routines, the concrete implementation of evaluation mechanisms, and teachers’ patterns of behavior and interaction in daily work contexts. Classroom observations, in particular, enabled close attention to how procedural requirements and managerial norms were enacted at the instructional level, providing contextual insight into the everyday operation of evaluation-based governance in teaching practice.

Building on participant observation, the study employed multiple rounds of face-to-face semi-structured in-depth interviews, using a snowball sampling strategy to capture perspectives from different organizational roles. Interview participants primarily included frontline teachers, administrative staff, and school managers. In addition, to supplement the analysis of how evaluation-based governance is manifested in classroom settings, a small number of student focus group interviews were conducted as supplementary data. These student discussions were not treated as a central analytic category but served to contextualize and triangulate teachers’ accounts of classroom monitoring and procedural regulation. All interviews were conducted voluntarily. Before each interview, participants were informed of the study’s objectives, the interview format, and principles of anonymity and confidentiality, and consent was obtained for audio recording. Individual interviews typically lasted between 50 and 60 min and were scheduled to avoid interfering with participants’ teaching or learning activities. All interview materials were anonymized during transcription, and all data were used exclusively for academic research purposes.

3.3. Data Analysis Data Analysis Procedures

Data collection and data analysis proceeded concurrently, following the principle of constant comparison emphasized in constructivist grounded theory. Throughout the fieldwork, the researcher continuously recorded observational notes and repeatedly compared and integrated these materials with interview transcripts. By systematically comparing experiences across different participants, time points, and organizational roles, recurring situations, actions, and interaction patterns in teachers’ work experiences were gradually identified. In the initial stage of analysis, interview transcripts and observational materials were examined line by line. Open coding focused on teachers’ experiences related to evaluation, promotion, supervision, and interpersonal interactions within everyday governance practices. Codes were developed in a manner that remained as close as possible to participants’ own expressions, to capture their meanings and interpretations. Through ongoing comparison across data sources, these initial codes were progressively integrated into more analytically robust concepts and categories. This analytic process was not linear, but evolved through iterative cycles of revisiting data, refining codes, and adjusting analytic focus. As analysis deepened, greater attention was directed toward the relationships among categories, particularly how evaluation-based governance was experienced by teachers through concrete management practices and daily interactions, and how it shaped the development of corresponding coping strategies. Student focus group data were primarily used to clarify how evaluation and surveillance requirements were enacted in classroom practice. These materials served as supplementary evidence to contextualize and support the analysis of teachers’ accounts, rather than contributing to the generation of core analytic categories. The analysis was considered to have reached theoretical saturation when additional data no longer yielded substantive insights into existing concepts or their relationships. To enhance analytic credibility, selected interview materials were revisited with participants at different stages of analysis, and analytic decisions were continuously examined through research memos and reflexive records. This reflexive process aimed to minimize the potential influence of the researcher’s positionality on interpretation [65]. Through this analytic procedure, the study developed an interpretive understanding of teachers’ work experiences in Chinese private higher education and the associated risks to human sustainability embedded within everyday governance practices.

3.4. Participants

As shown in

Table 1. Overview of Participants and Organizational Roles.

Participant Group	Organizational Position	Primary Role in Governance Process	Number of Participants
Teaching staff	Frontline educators	Experiencing performance evaluation, monitoring, and promotion processes	20
Administrative staff	School-level	Implementing monitoring, evaluation, and data collection practices	4
Management personnel	Senior management	Designing and overseeing governance and evaluation systems	2
Students (focus groups)	students	Indirectly involved in classroom monitoring and evaluation environments	8

, this study involved participants occupying different organizational roles within Chinese private vocational colleges, reflecting their distinct positions in governance structures and everyday institutional practices. The primary participant group consisted of 20 teaching staff who worked as frontline educators and were directly subject to performance evaluation, monitoring, and promotion processes. Their accounts constituted the core empirical basis of the analysis, providing in-depth insights into how governance mechanisms were experienced, interpreted, and navigated in daily work contexts. In addition, four administrative staff members were included to capture perspectives from those responsible for implementing monitoring, evaluation, and data collection practices at the school level. Two members of senior management participated to provide contextual insights into the design and oversight of governance and evaluation systems. To complement the analysis of teachers’ accounts, eight students participated in focus group interviews. Student data were used to provide contextual and classroom-level perspectives on how evaluation-based governance and monitoring practices were manifested in teaching activities and learning environments. These data served as supplementary material to support and contextualize teachers’ narratives, rather than as a primary source for generating core analytical categories. Together, these participant groups enabled the study to examine how evaluation-based governance was designed, enacted, and experienced across different organizational levels, while maintaining a clear analytical focus on teachers’ everyday work experiences.

3.5. Data Analysis

As outlined in

Table 2. Grounded Theory Coding Process and Analytical Focus.

Coding Stage	Analytical Focus	Key Outputs
Open Coding	Interview transcripts, field notes, and observational records were examined line by line to capture teachers’ everyday experiences related to evaluation practices, monitoring, career progression, interpersonal relations, and work pressures within private higher education institutions.	Initial codes reflecting evaluation pressure, attribution of achievements, monitoring practices, relational exclusion, emotional strain, silence, and compliance.
Axial Coding	Constant comparison was used to examine how governance practices, power asymmetries, and teachers’ responses were interconnected across organizational situations.	Higher-level categories such as evaluation-based control, relational governance, technological monitoring, gendered expectations, social exclusion, and constrained agency.
Selective Coding	Relationships among categories were examined and integrated into an overarching explanatory framework.	Core category describing an unsustainable governance process in which teachers’ professional autonomy and human sustainability are gradually eroded through silence, compliance, and structural entrapment.

, the analytical process unfolded through three interrelated stages of grounded theory coding, each with a distinct focus. At the initial stage, interview materials, field notes, and observational records were closely read to trace how teachers described their day-to-day work, particularly in relation to evaluation arrangements, monitoring practices, career pathways, interpersonal dynamics, and ongoing work demands within private higher education institutions. The subsequent stage focused on examining patterns across cases and situations. Through systematic comparison, recurring links were identified between governance arrangements, uneven power relations, and the ways teachers adjusted their actions and expectations in response. These comparisons allowed more abstract analytical categories to take shape. In the final stage, these categories were brought together to develop an overarching interpretive account. This process led to the identification of a core analytical theme that captures an unsustainable form of governance, in which teachers’ professional space and capacity to sustain their work are progressively narrowed through routine adaptation, limited voice, and constrained exit options.

4. Findings

Drawing on interviews with teachers, administrative staff, institutional leaders, and students, as well as extended field observations, the findings indicate that teachers’ experiences in Chinese private higher education cannot be reduced to a series of isolated negative incidents. Instead, they constitute an ongoing organizational process through which evaluation practices, relational governance, technological control, and structural constraints jointly and continuously erode teachers’ human sustainability. This process unfolds across four interrelated dimensions, which are outlined below.

4.1. Evaluation-Based Governance and the Reallocation of Professional Achievements

Interview data indicate that teachers consistently linked their experiences of occupational depletion to governance mechanisms centered on evaluation, appraisal, and promotion. Although institutional leaders repeatedly emphasized performance orientation and procedural fairness at the formal level, teachers’ accounts suggested that evaluation outcomes were, in practice, closely tied to managerial discretion and relational proximity to those in power. Multiple teachers reported that annual appraisals were not determined solely by teaching or research input but were significantly shaped by interpersonal relationships. As one teacher stated bluntly:

“At the end of the year, evaluations are basically decided by leaders. No matter how much effort you put in, people who have good relationships with leaders can easily pass the evaluation and even get an ‘excellent’ rating.”

Under this evaluative logic, teachers’ professional achievements in teaching competitions, student training, and research activities were frequently reallocated during award decisions and authorship attribution. Several teachers described being asked to “share” or relinquish credit for their work. One teacher recalled:

“I trained students and prepared them for competitions, but in the end, the leader insisted that I add the name of a colleague who had a close relationship with him. I felt deeply resentful.”

Such experiences were not isolated incidents but recurred across different teachers’ accounts. Reflecting on multiple competitions, another teacher explained:

“I did the training, I handled the competition, and in the end, when we won, they still forced me to add the names of people close to the leadership. I felt wronged, but what could I do? I had no choice but to comply—for the sake of getting an ‘excellent’ evaluation at the end of the year.”

Beyond authorship and awards, evaluation pressure also extended to supporting managers’ personal performance tasks. One teacher noted:

“Our leader also has his own evaluation targets. He asked me to help him write papers. I really didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t want to create conflict with him, so I had no choice.”

As such experiences accumulated, teachers gradually developed a shared understanding of how the evaluation system actually operated. Evaluation was no longer perceived as an institutional tool designed to support professional development, but rather as a governance mechanism functioning through relational alignment and compliance. One teacher summarized this perception succinctly:

“In our place, to be honest, as long as you have a good relationship with the leaders, you can get promoted. Whether it’s fair or not doesn’t really matter. You just learn to let it go.”

In contrast, an administrator described the evaluation process in more procedural terms:

“Everything is based on evaluation standards. We just received the list submitted by the secondary colleges.”

Here, evaluation outcomes functioned not only as assessments of teaching performance but also as symbolic indicators of whether teachers were recognized and accepted within the organization. Once teachers became aware that questioning authorship arrangements or evaluation results could lead to adverse consequences, most chose to accept existing arrangements. This process was accompanied by a strong sense of powerlessness and emotional suppression, and gradually eroded teachers’ sense of meaning in their professional labor. Beyond evaluation results and the redistribution of achievements, some teachers further noted that this relationship-oriented evaluative logic directly shaped managerial selection and promotion structures. One teacher described the composition of the management team with a tone of irony:

“In our university, all the administrators are under forty—ridiculous, isn’t it? If you have good relationships with leaders, you can squeeze into the management team. Compared to teaching, interpersonal relationships seem much more advantageous in private universities.”

In this teacher’s view, entry into management positions depended less on sustained teaching commitment or accumulated professional expertise than on inclusion within leadership trust networks. This perception further reinforced teachers’ understanding of how the evaluation system operated: evaluation not only determined annual appraisal outcomes and honor distribution, but also implicitly structured internal promotion pathways and power relations. Against this backdrop, teachers increasingly recognized that continuous investment in teaching and professional development did not necessarily translate into career returns, whereas maintaining favorable interpersonal relations became a key strategy for reducing occupational risk and accessing development opportunities. As a result, the evaluation system shifted from an ostensibly neutral performance tool to a central governance mechanism shaping teachers’ behavioral orientations and career expectations.

4.2. Relational Governance and the Normalization of Alignment Practices

Beyond formal evaluation and appraisal systems, the data reveal a governance logic centered on interpersonal relations, factional alignment, and demonstrations of loyalty. From the teachers’ perspectives, the allocation of resources, assignment of positions, and access to career opportunities within the institution are not determined solely by teaching performance or professional competence but are strongly shaped by whom one aligns with and whether one is perceived as belonging to the “right” group. Several teachers noted that under group-based management structures, leadership positions are subject to periodic rotation. Each leadership transition is accompanied by a reconfiguration of relational networks, introducing renewed uncertainty into teachers’ working conditions. As one teacher explained:

“Our university belongs to an education group, and leadership changes roughly every five years. When new leaders arrive, factions are reorganized. Teaching administrators and student affairs administrators form different camps. If you are close to one side, you cannot be close to the other. One colleague chose the wrong side, and now no one dares to interact with him.”

In this context, factional alignment is perceived as an implicit survival rule. Another teacher noted that remaining neutral after a leadership transition can itself become a source of risk:

“When new leaders come in, if you don’t take a side, you’ll be marginalized very quickly.”

As this relationally oriented governance logic is repeatedly experienced, teachers gradually come to recognize that professional competence and instructional commitment alone are insufficient to ensure occupational security. Instead, relational positioning and factional affiliation emerge as decisive factors shaping their working conditions. One teacher described the emotional toll of this realization:

“It’s exhausting. You know you came here to teach, but you gradually realize that everything except teaching seems to matter. I really want to leave.”

Over time, this form of relational governance becomes internalized as a taken-for-granted rule of organizational life. Teachers begin to adjust their behavior proactively—lowering visibility, avoiding dissent, and displaying compliance in critical situations—to maintain basic job stability. As one teacher summarized through a phrase commonly circulated within the institution:

“If competence is not enough, emotional intelligence has to make up for it. As long as you manage relationships well, you can get a good evaluation.”

Through this process, organizational order and surface-level stability are maintained, while teachers’ professional agency and discretionary space continue to contract. Relational governance thus evolves from a situational coping strategy into a routinized logic guiding everyday action, whereby conformity replaces professional expression as the primary means of navigating an uncertain governance environment.

4.3. Data-Driven Management and the Gradual Narrowing of Professional Space

As modes of school governance increasingly shift toward data-driven and digitalized forms, technological tools have been systematically integrated into teachers’ everyday work. Interview data and field observations indicate that classroom surveillance footage, indicators of student classroom behavior, and location-based attendance records have become routine components of institutional evaluation and management systems, serving as key bases for assessing teachers’ work status and instructional performance. Several administrative staff members noted that their responsibilities have gradually shifted toward retrieving, organizing, and compiling instructional process data. One administrator described the routine procedure of “class inspections” as follows:

“When leaders ask us to inspect classes, we go to the monitoring room and watch the cameras, counting how many students are looking up during class. If more than ten students are not looking at the blackboard and are using their phones, that teacher’s class will be publicly criticized.”

Beyond classroom surveillance, teachers’ physical presence on campus is also continuously monitored through digital tools. Another administrator explained:

“We also use attendance software. Teachers are required to be on campus during specified hours, and if the location function is not activated, it is counted as absenteeism.”

At the institutional level, such technologized management practices are framed as instruments for improving administrative efficiency and teaching quality. However, teachers’ lived experiences suggest that these measures are not implemented in a uniform or standardized manner. Instead, they are selectively applied in practice. Multiple teachers reported that, beyond instructional content itself, a substantial amount of time and energy is devoted to complying with procedural requirements, preparing documentation, and managing or explaining data outcomes. Teaching thus becomes embedded in a system of continuous adjustment, self-monitoring, and risk avoidance, rather than focusing solely on classroom interaction. One teacher expressed a clear sense of exhaustion when discussing classroom surveillance:

“I’m exhausted by this surveillance-based class inspection. University students are naturally active and easily distracted. Expecting them to stay focused every minute of a forty-five-minute class—who can actually achieve that? I don’t know. If they want to evaluate us, fine, but the key is to maintain good relationships with the people checking the cameras.”

Notably, this form of technologized management is not perceived only by teachers and administrators. Students also become aware of its selective operation through their everyday learning experiences. One student participating in a focus group remarked:

“We all know that administrators only monitor Teacher X’s classes. It seems like they never check the cameras for other teachers. The adult world is really complicated.”

This student perspective further reveals that classroom surveillance and data-based evaluation do not operate according to uniform or objective standards. Instead, they are embedded within relational considerations, evaluative expectations, and discretionary power. Rather than reducing subjectivity, technological tools are selectively deployed—determining who is monitored and how—to reinforce existing governance relations. For teachers, this means that technologized management not only generates continuous work pressure but also intensifies perceptions of opacity and unpredictability within the evaluation system. Consequently, teachers become more cautious in their daily teaching practices, engage in heightened self-restraint, and avoid behaviors that might be interpreted as risky. Another teacher noted that location-based attendance requirements make it difficult to maintain clear boundaries between work and personal life:

“The location check-in system is exhausting. The software is on my phone, and during working hours, I have to check in to prove that I’m on campus and at my post. Every month, administrators compile statistics on who wasn’t present.”

As these technologized management practices accumulate in everyday work, teachers commonly experience a sustained intensification of work rhythms. Tasks unrelated to teaching increasingly extend into off-duty hours, becoming normalized over time. Technological tools thus reshape not only the organization of teaching activities, but also subtly compress teachers’ professional judgment space, shifting attention away from meaningful pedagogical practice toward avoiding being flagged as ‘abnormal’ within data systems.

4.4. Structural Entrapment and the Erosion of Exit Options

Although many teachers explicitly expressed dissatisfaction, exhaustion, and disappointment with their current working conditions, the findings indicate that resignation was rarely perceived as a realistic or viable response. Teachers’ continued employment should not be interpreted as endorsement of existing governance arrangements, but rather as a passive outcome shaped by multiple intersecting structural constraints. First, the occupational identity of “university teacher” continues to carry symbolic value associated with stability and social respectability at both family and societal levels, rendering resignation a high-cost decision. One teacher reflected on this in relation to personal life:

“I’m still single, and in this city, people really care about your occupation when it comes to relationships. Once they hear you’re a university teacher—public or private—parents feel it’s something to be proud of.”

Similarly, several teachers noted that family expectations emphasized job stability rather than income:

“My parents don’t really care how much I earn. They just want me to have a stable job.”

Second, teachers widely perceived that changing institutions would not substantially improve their situation. Respondents emphasized the high degree of homogeneity among private higher education institutions in terms of governance structures and evaluation logics, making job mobility an ineffective exit strategy:

“It’s not that I don’t want to leave. Other private universities are basically the same. I’ve already moved once—it’s no different.”

More critically, teachers who attempted to explore alternative employment options experienced the exit itself as risky. One teacher described the consequences of submitting applications:

“I tried sending out resumes quietly. But other schools called my current workplace to ask about me. My leader didn’t say anything directly, but my annual evaluation score dropped significantly. That’s when I realized—once you’re seen as wanting to leave, your future here is basically over.”

Under the combined pressures of family responsibility, economic insecurity, and an uncertain labor market, teachers increasingly came to view attempts to change their situation as unrealistic or even dangerous. As one teacher stated:

“My family situation isn’t good, and the overall environment is bad. Where else could I go? As long as I get paid, it’s fine. I’m not young anymore—job-hopping isn’t realistic. I’ll just endure it.”

In this context, teachers commonly adjusted by lowering professional expectations and reducing discretionary investment in their work. Some explicitly stated that they no longer viewed teaching as a space for professional fulfillment, but merely as a means of subsistence:

“I don’t expect anything anymore. I just teach my classes properly. I don’t think about innovation or professional value.”

These patterns suggest that continued employment does not indicate organizational sustainability but rather reveals a condition of structural entrapment. Constrained by occupational identity, family expectations, sector-wide homogeneity, and evaluation-related risks, teachers are unable to interrupt the process of depletion through exit. The progressive erosion of exit options allows unsustainable governance practices to be maintained and reproduced through everyday organizational operations. Students’ observations further corroborate that this constrained exit is not merely an individual choice, but a normalized organizational condition. Several students noted the high frequency of teacher turnover:

“Teachers change very often here. In some subjects, we get a new teacher every semester. Many of them say the pressure is too much.”

At the same time, students became aware that the symbolic status of teaching does not translate into stability or ease:

“I used to think being a teacher was prestigious, but they actually seem really exhausted.”

“Most of our teachers are very young—many just graduated from university, not much older than us.”

These student accounts indicate that high turnover does not reflect genuine mobility or choice, but rather a structural condition characterized by strong replaceability and weak employment security. Frequent teacher replacement results less from voluntary career movement than from accumulated pressure, insufficient protection, and constrained development prospects. For teachers, exiting the organization does not necessarily lead to more secure employment; for institutions, a workforce characterized by youthfulness and high turnover further weakens teachers’ capacity to negotiate or improve their conditions, deepening their entrapment within existing governance structures.

4.5. Core Process: The Gradual Erosion of Teachers’ Human Sustainability

The preceding analysis suggests that within organizational contexts characterized by evaluation-based governance, relational mediation, and an increasing reliance on technocratic management, teachers do not encounter isolated managerial measures or sporadic negative events. Rather, they are embedded in a continuously operating, processual mode of governance. Through the intertwined operation of everyday evaluation practices, relational governance, and data-driven management, this mode gradually reconfigures teachers’ work practices and delineates the boundaries of acceptable action. Within this process, teachers rarely respond through open confrontation or voluntary exit. Instead, they progressively develop coping strategies marked by silence, compliance, and the lowering of professional expectations. Teachers’ professional autonomy, emotional investment, and sense of occupational value are thus slowly eroded through practices that appear stable, routine, and largely invisible. Over time, this process normalizes working conditions that would otherwise be difficult to sustain, producing a situation best characterized as ‘staying without sustainability’—a condition in which continued presence masks the ongoing depletion of human sustainability.

Figure 2 illustrates a cumulative and self-reinforcing process through which governance mechanisms in Chinese private higher education gradually erode teachers’ human sustainability. Evaluation-based governance, relational governance practices, and data-driven management initially reshape teachers’ everyday work practices, including the reallocation of professional achievements, alignment-oriented participation, and the proceduralization of teaching. These changes constrain teachers’ responses, leading to compliance, acquiescence, and reduced professional engagement as rational strategies for minimizing risk. Over time, such constrained responses contribute to the gradual erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, emotional and energy resources, and sense of work meaning. Importantly, this erosion does not represent a terminal outcome but feeds back into the governance context by normalizing compliance and silence, thereby reinforcing existing governance conditions. As a result, unsustainable governance is reproduced through everyday practices, forming a cyclical process in which human sustainability is continuously depleted rather than abruptly exhausted.

5. Discussion

From a human sustainability perspective, the findings of this study provide an important contribution to understanding the long-term conditions of teachers’ work. Previous research has emphasized that the sustainability of organizations and institutions does not depend solely on performance outputs or the efficiency of resource allocation, but more fundamentally on whether individuals can sustain their professional capacities, action space, and sense of work meaning over time [30,31]. This study shows that within the context of Chinese private higher education, although most teachers remain formally employed, have undergone substantial shifts, gradually giving rise to a condition that participants themselves described as “remaining in the position while feeling increasingly hollowed out by everyday demands” (Teacher interview), gradually giving rise to a condition best described as remaining in position while being continuously depleted. This condition should not be understood as a consequence of individual incapacity or failed adaptation. Rather, it is produced through everyday practices under specific governance and evaluation arrangements. These findings resonate with the arguments of [32,33], who suggest that organizational surface stability may conceal the gradual erosion of human foundations. At the same time, they further demonstrate that teacher retention alone is insufficient as an indicator of organizational sustainability in education. Instead, closer attention must be paid to whether teachers’ professional judgment, emotional resources, and sense of occupational meaning are institutionally supported and reproduced over the long term. When these key human resources are continually depleted through routine governance practices, human sustainability may be progressively undermined in ways that remain largely invisible, even as staffing stability and short-term performance are formally maintained.

In educational settings, risks to human sustainability are particularly pronounced. Teaching is inherently characterized by sustained professional judgment, emotional labor, and the continuous balancing of multiple roles [2,10]. However, this study shows that within governance environments centered on evaluation outcomes, procedural compliance, and relational positioning, teachers’ everyday practices gradually shift away from teaching itself and become increasingly oriented toward managing assessment demands, avoiding potential risks, and maintaining organizational relationships. When instructional engagement lacks sustained institutional support, teachers may remain in their positions while their sense of work meaning and professional identity are progressively eroded through routine practice [10,38]. As ref. [47] argues, evaluation systems in specific organizational contexts can shift from instruments supporting professional development to mechanisms of behavioral regulation and discipline. The findings of this study further indicate that when evaluation and promotion depend heavily on managerial discretion and when transparent feedback or grievance channels are absent, teachers come to recognize that questioning arrangements, expressing dissent, or insisting on professional judgment may entail long-term and irreversible career risks. Under such conditions, silence, compliance, and reduced engagement do not reflect value alignment but rather constitute a form of passive rationality—a strategic orientation toward risk avoidance and occupational survival within asymmetrical power structures.

From a human sustainability perspective, this form of passive rationality may stabilize individual employment in the short term while gradually depleting the core resources on which educational organizations depend. Teachers increasingly limit the use of professional judgment, avoid innovative practices, and narrow their work goals to ‘avoiding mistakes’ and ‘passing evaluations,’ thereby weakening organizational feedback loops and internal learning mechanisms. Silence and compliance thus function not only as individual coping strategies but also as self-reinforcing governance outcomes, enabling institutions to maintain surface stability while their innovative capacity and human foundations are incrementally eroded. Importantly, the silence, compliance, and self-restraint observed in this study should not be interpreted as passivity, disengagement, or a lack of professional responsibility. Rather, they represent a survival rationality formed under structural constraints. When exit costs are high, external opportunities are limited, and institutional protections are weak, teachers reduce expression, avoid conflict, and recalibrate professional expectations to preserve basic occupational security [59,60]. Yet the cumulative organizational consequences of such adaptation are substantial. As silence and compliance become normalized and tacitly rewarded, universities progressively lose their capacity for critical reflection, professional innovation, and organizational learning. Over time, this governance configuration constrains teachers’ professional agency while simultaneously undermining higher education’s core functions as a site of knowledge production and innovation, generating a structural tension between organizational stability and the long-term sustainability of human and institutional resources.

Relational governance plays a critical mediating and amplifying role in this process. The findings indicate that interpersonal networks and factional positioning exert substantive influence over resource allocation, job assignments, and career advancement. Such relationship-oriented governance practices further intensify power asymmetries within organizations. Under these conditions, teachers’ silence and compliance function not merely as individual strategic choices but as key organizational conditions that enable unsustainable governance to persist over time [61]. When conformity and conflict avoidance are widely perceived as `rational` and `safe` responses, disadvantageous governance arrangements are less likely to be challenged through open confrontation and are instead normalized and reproduced through everyday interactions and work practices. With regard to the scope and transferability of the findings, this study does not seek to generalize its conclusions to all higher education contexts. In China, private higher education institutions are typically subject to stronger market pressures, more centralized managerial authority, and weaker labor protections. These structural characteristics make evaluation-based governance and the resulting patterns of silence and compliance particularly visible. Nevertheless, the mechanisms identified in this study should not be understood as problems unique to private institutions. Rather, they reflect a broader governance logic and set of adaptive responses with wider explanatory potential. As performance-oriented management and evaluation systems continue to expand across Chinese higher education, similar pressure structures and forms of passive rationality may also emerge—albeit in different configurations—within segments of the public sector. At the international level, despite variations in institutional and cultural contexts, the influence of New Public Management and evaluation cultures suggests that evaluation-based governance and its implications for teachers’ human sustainability hold comparative relevance. In this study, evaluation-based management is conceptualized as a set of concrete governance tools and operational mechanisms, including performance assessments, data surveillance, and promotion evaluations. Governance, by contrast, refers to the broader institutional arrangements that structure power distribution, decision-making authority, and accountability mechanisms. From this perspective, teachers’ silence and compliance should not be attributed to any single evaluative instrument but understood as the cumulative outcome of evaluation-based management embedded within a specific governance structure. Distinguishing between these analytical levels allows this study to clarify how unsustainable governance practices gradually erode teachers’ human sustainability through routine management processes.

Viewed through an occupational health lens, the findings carry important implications. The long-term emotional exhaustion, diminished sense of professional meaning, and sustained self-restraint observed among teachers are not the result of individual psychological vulnerability but reflect structural risks generated by particular governance configurations. Interventions aimed solely at individual coping or psychological adjustment, while leaving evaluation systems, voice opportunities, and governance structures unaddressed, are therefore unlikely to substantially improve teachers’ long-term occupational health. From a policy perspective, the findings suggest that intensifying evaluation metrics and managerial accountability alone are insufficient for achieving human sustainability in higher education. Instead, institutional arrangements that ensure transparent evaluation feedback, accessible grievance mechanisms, and protected space for professional judgment appear critical for mitigating silence and passive rationality. While this study does not incorporate formal measures of teacher well-being or mental health, it adopts a process-oriented human sustainability perspective to examine how governance conditions shape teachers’ long-term work experiences. Future research may productively integrate the concept of passive rationality with established frameworks of teacher well-being and occupational health to extend cross-disciplinary dialogue.

Finally, the absence of a public university comparison group reflects a deliberate research design choice. Private higher education institutions in China present more pronounced market pressures, governance concentration, and labor insecurity, allowing relevant mechanisms to emerge with greater analytical clarity. Future comparative studies across private and public institutions could further examine how these governance mechanisms operate under different institutional conditions and with varying degrees of intensity.

6. Conclusions

Drawing on in-depth interviews with teachers, administrative staff, and managers, as well as extended field observations in Chinese private universities, this study examined how teachers’ work experiences are produced and sustained within a specific governance context. The findings demonstrate that teachers do not encounter a series of isolated negative events. Rather, they are embedded in an ongoing organizational process in which evaluation-based management, relational governance, and technologized management operate in combination to continuously shape teachers’ work practices and professional orientations. From a human sustainability perspective, the core contribution of this study lies in showing that teachers’ continued retention cannot be treated as a sufficient indicator of organizational sustainability. In the context of private higher education, evaluation practices have gradually shifted from instruments intended to support professional development to governance mechanisms that define behavioral boundaries, regulate attitudes, and reallocate professional achievements. Teachers increasingly interpret evaluation systems as sources of risk rather than developmental support, leading to a transformation in their sense of professional meaning and identity. At the same time, relational governance operating outside formal institutional rules plays a significant role in resource allocation and position assignment. Teachers come to recognize that professional competence and effort alone are insufficient to secure career development; instead, relational positioning and factional alignment emerge as decisive factors. Under such conditions, silence, compliance, and reduced expression are internalized as ‘rational’ everyday coping strategies.

The introduction of technologized management tools further intensifies this process. Classroom activities, attendance, and teaching practices are continuously subjected to surveillance and data-based evaluation. Although these measures are often justified at the institutional level as means of enhancing efficiency and quality, the findings indicate that, in practice, they amplify teachers’ perceptions of risk. Teaching becomes increasingly oriented toward procedural compliance and anticipatory self-monitoring in response to potential evaluation. As multiple governance mechanisms operate simultaneously, teachers may experience dissatisfaction with their working conditions yet find it difficult to interrupt the process through exit. Instead, they tend to lower expectations and compress professional aspirations to maintain their positions. This study highlights a condition of ‘staying without sustainability,’ in which organizational stability is maintained at the cost of the gradual erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, emotional resources, and sense of meaning. By foregrounding the processual interaction between governance arrangements and everyday coping practices, the findings underscore the importance of moving beyond retention-based indicators and attending to the long-term sustainability of human resources within higher education institutions.

At the theoretical level, this study advances existing explanations of organizational silence and compliance by introducing and elaborating the concept of passive rationality. The findings demonstrate that teachers’ silence and compliance do not stem from indifference or a lack of professional responsibility. Rather, they represent a form of survival rationality that emerges under conditions of high exit costs, limited alternative opportunities, and pronounced power asymmetries. While such coping strategies may appear rational at the individual level, they cumulatively undermine critical feedback, professional innovation, and organizational learning at the collective level. In this sense, passive rationality constitutes a structural risk to human sustainability in higher education. By linking individual coping strategies to long-term organizational consequences, this study offers a new theoretical perspective for understanding how educational institutions can remain outwardly stable while experiencing gradual internal erosion.

Based on these findings, the study proposes two practically feasible implications. First, private higher education institutions and relevant policymakers should consider establishing relatively independent grievance and feedback mechanisms. Such arrangements may reduce the evaluation-related risks associated with expressing professional judgment, thereby preventing silence and compliance from being institutionally reinforced. Second, there is a need to critically reflect on evaluation systems that are heavily oriented toward quantitative outputs and short-term results. Moderating the decisive role of single performance indicators in promotion and appraisal processes may help preserve necessary space for professional judgment and pedagogical innovation. These adjustments do not require a fundamental restructuring of existing governance systems, yet they may help mitigate the ongoing erosion of human resources embedded in everyday organizational practices. This study has several limitations that should be acknowledged. First, the sample was drawn from two private universities located in the same city in China. Their organizational characteristics and governance arrangements may limit the generalizability of the findings to other institutional or regional contexts. Second, the analysis relied primarily on qualitative data and did not systematically incorporate indicators of teachers’ health status or long-term career trajectories. Future research could address these limitations by conducting comparative analyses across regions and institutional types, or by integrating quantitative measures of occupational health and career development to further examine and extend the governance mechanisms and human sustainability issues identified in this study.