Institutional adaptation of managerialism in Chinese higher education: A faculty-centered ethnographic analysis of everyday practices

This study interrogates the hybridization of managerialism within Chinese higher education through a faculty-centered ethnographic lens, revealing a complex interplay between imported neoliberal logics and indigenous bureaucratic imperatives. Drawing on a year-long ethnographic investigation, the study demonstrates that Chinese academia has not merely adopted Western management techniques but has rearticulated performance metrics, accountability systems, and organizational controls within an institutional logic that privileges officialdom. This reconfiguration not only subordinates scholarly rigor to quantifiable benchmarks but also accelerates the rapid ascent of administrators—from deans to university presidents and local government officials—via mechanisms analogous to performance competitions and administrative contracting. Moreover, the study examines how faculty navigate this intricate terrain of micromanagement, symbolic power, and covert resistance, thereby contributing to broader theoretical debates on institutional hybridity, field-level isomorphism, and the limits of managerial rationality in higher education governance.