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.