Organizational Inertia and Teacher Burnout in High-Performance Schools: A Cross-Level Analysis of the Pressure Sinking Mechanism

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Using a century-old county-level key high school as a case study, this research employs a mixed-methods approach, combining semi-structured interviews with 32 stakeholders and longitudinal quantitative data analysis from 2020 to 2024, to investigate how organisational inertia operates in high-performance educational institutions and its impact on teacher burnout. We identify a “pressure sinking” mechanism: high-performance organisations maintain surface stability by systematically transferring adaptation responsibilities from the organisational level to individual members, whilst imposing structural costs on employees. Analysis reveals that organisational inertia operates through three processes formation and activation, pressure transfer mechanisms, and individual-level consequences, ultimately resulting in structural teacher burnout characterised by resource depletion, erosion of professional identity, and inadequate support systems. By connecting organisational inertia theory with individual burnout research through the concept of “pressure sinking”, this study provides a cross-level transmission model that explains how organisational adaptation failures systematically translate into individual work experiences, offering empirical guidance for educational leaders to identify warning signals and prevent systemic teacher burnout in high-performance schools. Social science/Education Biological sciences/Psychology Social science/Psychology pressure sinking organisational inertia teacher burnout high-performance schools educational leadership Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Introduction High-performance organisations often exhibit paradoxical difficulties in adapting to environmental changes. Audia et al. (2000) found that past success leads organisations to become overly reliant on existing strategies, triggering greater adaptation challenges following radical environmental shifts. This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the education sector: many historically prestigious schools struggle to effectively adapt to educational reforms and intensified competition (Chen and Ke, 2014; Yan, 2015), whilst simultaneously experiencing heightened teacher attrition and widespread burnout (Wang and Bian, 2022; Tian and Guo, 2024). County-level key high schools in China provide a quintessential case of this paradox. Within China’s county-level education system, these schools serve as the sole or primary source of elite education in their regions, concentrating the best students and teachers whilst bearing critical responsibility for channelling talent to top-tier universities. This resource monopoly endows county-level key high schools with exceptionally high social prestige and expectations, whilst simultaneously subjecting them to immense performance pressures. Currently, these once-dominant regional education centres demonstrate intensified adaptation difficulties under new environmental pressures such as the New Gaokao Reform and heightened regional competition (Wang et al., 2025). Although existing research has separately examined organisational inertia and individual burnout, understanding of the cross-level relationship between these phenomena remains limited. Research on organisational inertia has primarily focused on resistance to change at the organisational level (Hannan and Freeman, 1984; Gilbert, 2005), with insufficient attention to how it affects individual members’ work experiences. Teacher burnout research has identified numerous organisational environmental factors (Demerouti et al., 2001; Halbesleben, 2006), yet lacks mechanistic analysis of how organisational adaptation difficulties transmit to the individual level. This theoretical gap constrains our deeper understanding of educational organisations’ difficulties with change and their human costs. Through an in-depth case study of School X—a century-old county-level key high school confronting the New Gaokao Reform and intensified regional competition—this research investigates how organisational inertia operates in high-performance organisations and its effects on individuals. Employing a mixed-methods design through in-depth interviews with 32 stakeholders and longitudinal quantitative data, the study analyses the process through which organisational inertia leads to teacher burnout. The study reveals that teacher burnout in high-performance schools is not merely an individual psychological issue, but rather a systemic consequence of high-performance organisations systematically transferring adaptation responsibilities to individual members. By connecting organisational and individual analytical levels, this research illuminates how institutional advantages become structural barriers to change, providing practical guidance for educational leaders to identify warning signals and prevent systemic teacher burnout. Literature Review Organizational Inertia Theory The concept of organisational inertia, initially proposed by Hannan and Freeman (1984), refers to organisations’ persistent resistance to changing their core features. The theoretical development has evolved from static structural analysis to dynamic process understanding. Early research revealed self-reinforcing characteristics of organisational behaviour and discontinuous patterns of evolution, demonstrating that organisations can both drive sustained success and trigger adaptation failures during environmental changes (Miller and Friesen, 1980; Tushman and Romanelli, 1985). Subsequent theoretical developments expanded inertia from a single structural dimension to comprehensive analytical frameworks, incorporating concepts such as “core rigidities” (Leonard-Barton, 1992) and “resource rigidity” (Gilbert, 2005), with recent research further providing multidimensional conceptualisation frameworks (Huang et al., 2013). The relationship between success and inertia presents a critical paradox. Miller’s (1992) Icarus Paradox demonstrates that core strengths, when continuously reinforced, evolve into excessive rigidity, thereby triggering adaptation failures. Audia et al.’s (2000) longitudinal study provided empirical evidence that past success promotes the continuation of established action paths by focusing on the same strategies, leading to greater strategic persistence following radical environmental changes. Supporting research indicates that organisations tend to select strategies with strong initial performance but limited long-term improvement potential, rather than alternatives with greater long-term adaptability (Denrell and Le Mens, 2020). This suggests that success itself may become a barrier to organisational change. However, existing research has primarily focused on the static characteristics of inertia and organisational-level phenomena, with limited understanding of inertia’s dynamic activation processes and cross-level transmission mechanisms. The unique operational patterns of inertia in high-performance organisational contexts remain insufficiently explored, particularly regarding the mechanisms through which organisational-level adaptation difficulties transmit to individual member levels, which require further investigation. Teacher Burnout: From Individual to Organizational Perspectives Teacher burnout research has undergone a significant shift from individual attribution towards an organisational perspective. Early research primarily attributed occupational burnout to individual characteristics and demographic variables (Freudenberger, 1974; Chang, 2009), yet individual-focused approaches demonstrated limitations in explaining the prevalence of teacher burnout. Karasek’s (1979) demand-control model marked the beginning of an organisational perspective, with Demerouti et al. (2001) subsequently developing the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, which provided a systematic framework for understanding the organisational mechanisms of teacher burnout. As research has deepened, the core role of organisational support in alleviating teacher burnout has become increasingly prominent. Employees’ perceptions of organisational support directly influence their work conditions (Eisenberger et al., 1986; Halbesleben, 2006). Recent research has further confirmed the critical position of organisational support and principal-teacher relationships in teacher burnout, demonstrating that effective organisational support can alleviate work pressure by redefining the nature of problems (Trinidad, 2025; Dehne et al., 2025). Beyond support mechanisms, organisational structural characteristics such as organisational rigidity, insufficient decision-making participation, and workplace condition issues also exert significant impacts on teacher burnout (Brissie et al., 1988). The educational reform environment adds new complexity to understanding organisation-individual relationships. Managerialist tendencies during reform processes often subject teachers to dual pressures of increased workloads and reduced autonomy, with even organisational arrangements intended to improve conditions potentially producing unintended negative effects (Wang and Bian, 2022; Zhong et al., 2025; Hamm, 2025). Although the influence of organisational environments on teacher burnout has been widely acknowledged, existing research primarily focuses on direct environment-individual relationships, with limited understanding of the mechanisms through which organisational adaptation difficulties transmit to the individual level. The Success Paradox in Educational Settings As “loosely coupled systems” (Weick, 1982), educational organisations possess structures and incentive mechanisms that inherently favour maintaining the status quo rather than driving change (Cuban, 1988, p. xxi). Existing research has identified multiple factors impeding school reform, including three major barriers—ossified organisational culture, institutional path dependence, and insufficient reform communication (Aldridge et al., 2024)—as well as nine forms of inertia such as conservative tendencies, system stability requirements, and standardisation pressures (Jónasson, 2016). The inherent complexity of educational change involves contradictory factors, goals, and beliefs, thus presenting paradoxical characteristics (Schaap and Vanlommel, 2024).The success paradox in education manifests particularly prominently in high-performance schools. Whilst high-performance secondary schools recognise the negative consequences of high-pressure environments, they continue to value their social and educational advantages, forming a phenomenon of “privileged culture maintenance” (Galloway and Conner, 2015). This pressure to be “the best” places students at high risk of serious adjustment problems, reflecting the core dilemma whereby success itself becomes a burden for continued success (Ebbert et al., 2019). Cross-cultural research demonstrates that rigid “success frames”, whilst facilitating academic excellence, also create negative consequences such as cultural identity alienation, exhibiting structural characteristics similar to the identity burden of high-performance schools (Lee and Zhou, 2014). However, existing research primarily focuses on phenomenological descriptions of the success paradox, lacking in-depth analysis of the specific mechanisms through which high-performance organisations transfer adaptation pressures to individual members. Research Questions and Theoretical Framework Although both organisational inertia theory and teacher burnout research have become relatively mature, effective integration between them remains lacking. Existing research exhibits three critical theoretical gaps: first, organisational inertia research primarily focuses on static characteristics, with limited understanding of its dynamic activation processes; second, mechanistic analysis of how organisational adaptation difficulties transmit across levels to individual members is absent; third, the unique operational patterns of inertia in the specific context of high-performance organisations have not been systematically explored. Accordingly, this research poses the following core questions: How does organisational inertia operate in high-performance organisations? How does organisational inertia affect individual members' work experiences? Method Research Design This research adopts an in-depth case study approach (Yin, 2018) to explore the cross-level transmission mechanisms of organisational inertia in high-performance educational organisations. Case study methodology is appropriate for this research because organisational inertia involves multi-level complex processes, whilst existing theories lack systematic explanations of how inertia operates in high-performance organisations and affects individual members. This theoretical gap requires filling through in-depth contextual analysis and inductive theory building. Case selection follows theoretical sampling logic, seeking a “typical case” capable of revealing mechanisms of organisational inertia. School X, a century-old county-level key high school in Z Province, satisfies four key characteristics: sustained provincial leadership for 30 years (high-performance history); currently facing external shocks including the New Gaokao Reform and intensified regional competition (environmental turbulence); organisational responses exhibiting marked rigidity (adaptation difficulties); and a 146% surge in teacher attrition since 2021 (observable impacts at the individual level). The convergence of these characteristics makes School X an ideal research setting for understanding “how success transforms into inertia” and “how organisational dilemmas transmit to individuals”. Data Collection Data collection employed mixed methods, combining in-depth interviews with longitudinal quantitative data. Interviews utilised purposive sampling to ensure coverage of multiple stakeholder perspectives. The 32 interview participants comprised education administration personnel (n=5), school management (n=7), frontline teachers (n=10), student representatives (n=5), and parent representatives (n=5) (see Table 1). Table 1 Interview Participant Composition and Schedule Organisational Level Functional Role Code Number Education Administration County-level education bureau leadership and department heads ADM-01 to ADM-05 5 School Management School leadership and middle management SCH-01 to SCH-07 7 Frontline Teachers Subject teachers and teaching research group leaders across disciplines and career stages TEA-01 to TEA-10 10 Student Representatives Students from Grades 10-12 STU-01 to STU-05 5 Parent Representatives Parents of students from Grades 10-12 PAR01 to PAR05 5 Interviews were conducted in two rounds. The first round focused on the organisational level (education bureau and school management), exploring how the school understood its historical achievements, perceived environmental changes, and what response measures were adopted. The second round delved into the individual level (teachers, students, parents), examining actual changes in the working environment, teachers’ authentic feelings, and students’ observations of teaching quality. This tiered design enabled the research to capture different understandings of the same phenomena across levels, revealing cognitive differences and power relations. Interviews began with open-ended questions (such as “What do you consider the greatest challenges the school has faced in recent years?” ), followed by in-depth probing based on participants’ responses. Individual interviews lasted 45-90 minutes, whilst group interviews lasted 90-120 minutes. All interviews were audio-recorded with participants’ consent and transcribed verbatim. To protect participant privacy, an anonymised coding system was adopted (ADM for administration, SCH for school management, TEA for teachers, STU for students, PAR for parents). For minor students, parental informed consent was obtained in addition to student assent. Longitudinal quantitative data provided complementary evidence for qualitative findings, including teacher attrition records, student performance data, and regional educational environment indicators from 2020-2024. Data collection continued until theoretical saturation, the point at which new interviews no longer generated new theoretical insights. Coding analysis showed that by the fifth batch of data (parent interviews), the rate of new code emergence had declined to 3.9%, well below the 10% saturation threshold, confirming that saturation had been achieved (see Supplementary Table S5 for details). Data Analysis Data analysis followed Charmaz’s (2014) constructivist grounded theory framework, comprising three stages: initial coding, focused coding, and theoretical coding. The initial coding stage involved line-by-line analysis of interview transcripts, allowing concepts to emerge naturally from the data. Researchers continually asked, “What is happening here? What does this mean?” For example, when management described “back then, homeroom teachers spent six and a half days per week at school”, this was coded as “historical narrative of extreme working hours”; when parents expressed “School X rarely has students who rank in the provincial top ten anymore”, this was coded as “expectation gap in elite identity”. This process generated 73 initial codes(see Supplementary Table S1). The focused coding stage integrated initial codes into higher-level categories through constant comparison. Researchers identified patterns across different interview participants and contexts. For instance, multiple codes concerning “extreme working hours”, “golden era glory”, and “visiting delegations from other schools” all pointed towards how the organisation reconstructed history through selective memory, and were therefore integrated into “repeated emphasis on historical achievements”. Similarly, codes such as “sudden personnel transfers”, “frequent teacher turnover”, and “lack of school autonomy” revealed a systematic separation between decision-making authority and implementation responsibility. The 73 initial codes were ultimately integrated into 14 focused categories(see Supplementary Table S1 for the complete coding structure). The theoretical coding stage identified relationships amongst focused categories, constructing an explanatory framework. The 14 focused categories were further abstracted into three theoretical dimensions: “Ossification of Success Experience and Environmental Change Response” (five categories) revealed the formation and activation of organisational inertia; “Transfer of Organisational Responsibility to Individuals” (four categories) revealed pressure transmission mechanisms; and “Multidimensional Predicament of Teachers’ Work Conditions” (five categories) revealed individual-level consequences. These three dimensions together constitute a complete explanation of the “pressure sinking” mechanism. For detailed coding structures of each theoretical dimension, see Supplementary Tables S2-S4. To ensure research quality, multiple safeguards were implemented. Two researchers independently coded 30% of the interview materials, with inter-coder reliability tests showing Cohen’s kappa ranging from 0.84 to 0.89(see Supplementary Table S6). Member checking invited five key participants to review preliminary findings, with participants confirming that research findings aligned with their experiences. Additionally, data triangulation (interviews, documents, quantitative data) and negative case analysis strategies were employed to enhance credibility. Findings Organizational Inertia Formation and Activation Upon entering School X, one is immediately struck by its illustrious history—this century-old institution maintained provincial leadership for 30 consecutive years and cultivated numerous distinguished alumni. Yet it is precisely those factors that once created educational excellence that have transformed into barriers to adaptation when confronting environmental challenges. We found that organisational inertia is not a static structure, but rather a dynamic system constituted by both the ossification of success experiences and activation by external threats. “Our school’s education is ‘diligent teaching, arduous learning’” —this phrase appeared repeatedly throughout our interviews, from the principal’s formal introduction to teachers’ daily exchanges, from the school’s promotional materials to parents’ expressions of expectations. This consistency itself merits reflection: the phrase has transcended mere description of educational practice to become the cognitive cornerstone of an inertial structure. It not only defines “who we are” but, more importantly, delineates “how we should act”. When a senior school administrator recalled the school’ s golden era, he stated: “Back then, homeroom teachers spent six and a half days per week at school, every day from six-thirty in the morning until nine-thirty or ten at night. Teachers and students only had Sunday afternoons off. It was through this level of dedication that we achieved such excellent educational outcomes!” (SCH-03). In this narrative, extreme time investment is no longer portrayed as an expedient under specific historical conditions, but reconstructed as an eternal truth leading to success. This process of reconstruction reveals the first key mechanism of success ossification in high-performance organisations: the sacralisation of selective memory. Organisational memory is not an objective record of historical facts, but rather a subjective construction serving current identity needs (Rowlinson et al., 2010). In reviewing its success trajectory, School X systematically emphasised evidence supporting the “diligent teaching, arduous learning” narrative whilst overlooking other possible success factors—such as the relatively superior quality of incoming students at the time, less external competition, and a different evaluation environment. This selective reinforcement ultimately created a false sense of causality: specific behavioural patterns became the sole explanation for success, and any questioning of this pattern was regarded as a betrayal of historical glory. This cognitive ossification further propelled a deeper institutionalisation process—the pressure to maintain elite identity. The school’ s social reputation constitutes not only an important resource but has simultaneously become a heavy institutional burden. During interviews, parents’ disappointment was palpable: “School X rarely has students who rank in the provincial top ten or top hundred anymore” (PAR-02); “There used to be many high scores, but for some reason they’ve disappeared in recent years” (PAR-01). These expressions reflect not merely dissatisfaction with current performance but, more importantly, reveal an expectation structure: School X “should” continuously produce top-performing students, and any fluctuation in performance is interpreted as a threat to its identity and status. The pressure to maintain excellence generated profound organisational constraint effects, creating necessary conditions for the subsequent activation of organisational inertia. The school had to continuously invest substantial resources to maintain its reputational status, and this maintenance behaviour often adopted conservative strategies—reducing failure risk by reinforcing existing success patterns. The problem is that when the environment undergoes fundamental change, the cost of such risk-avoidance strategies may be the systematic weakening of organisational innovation capacity. The school could neither risk experimenting with new development paths (because the reputational cost of failure was too high) nor calmly accept normal performance fluctuations (because of excessively high social expectations). This dual constraint ultimately trapped the school in the so-called “success paradox”. This paradox created ideal conditions for the activation of organisational inertia—when external threats truly arrived, the organisation would respond to challenges with rigid defence rather than adaptive adjustment. It was precisely on this foundation of ossified success that School X’ s organisational inertia became fully activated when external threats—the New Gaokao Reform and intensified regional competition—arrived simultaneously. These multiple shocks created unprecedented tension between the school’ s ossified success patterns and changing environmental demands. When confronting such tension, organisations facing threats often produce rigid responses (Staw et al., 1981), and School X adopted this response pattern—when existing cognitive frameworks encountered inexplicable new phenomena, the first reaction was not to revise the framework but to question the legitimacy of the phenomena. This rigid response was achieved through three mutually reinforcing mechanisms: First was the technological intensification of control mechanisms. From the perspective of relevant school personnel, the New Gaokao Reform “severely undermined our former status as a strong humanities school” (SCH-03), redefining environmental change as an “ unjust deprivation” of the organisation’ s existing advantages. Correspondingly, when young teachers began exhibiting different work philosophies, the school introduced comprehensive technological surveillance: “The school installed facial recognition devices at various entrances including the underground car park and canteen... which can automatically record teachers’ attendance” (ADM-04). This technological control not only failed to enhance teacher engagement but instead shifted internal professional identity constraints towards external technological monitoring, falling into a vicious cycle of “the more control, the less control”. Second was the singular intensification of the evaluation system. Faced with parents’ questioning of the school’s performance, the school further strengthened its Gaokao-centred incentive mechanism: “Establishing a Gaokao-oriented reward system... prioritising rewards for teaching teams with excellent results” (SCH-01). This evaluation rigidity reflected the typical pattern whereby organisations reinforce existing core capabilities to maintain identity continuity when facing identity threats (Leonard-Barton, 1992). Yet the cost was systematic neglect of educational practice complexity and marginalisation of long-term educational quality improvement. Third was the selective closure of boundary management. Although the school “engaged master teachers and external experts to conduct educational training” (SCH-02), the logic of these recruitment strategies remained focused on finding external resources that could adapt to the existing culture, systematically excluding any heterogeneous factors that might bring cognitive disruption. This selective openness created a surface appearance of “learning” and “improvement” whilst actually reinforcing existing thinking patterns and behavioural inertia. Through the mutual reinforcement of control rigidity, evaluation rigidity, and boundary rigidity, School X formed a complete organisational inertia system. Within this system, the institutionalised maintenance of historical achievements provided a legitimacy foundation for rigid responses, whilst defensive mechanisms under external threats further consolidated existing success patterns. This mutual reinforcement ultimately created a particular organisational state: unable to abandon past success paths yet incapable of effectively responding to environmental change challenges. However, once an organisational inertia system forms, the pressure for environmental adaptation does not disappear but is instead transferred and redistributed through a distinctive mechanism. The Pressure Sinking Mechanism Once School X’ s organisational inertia system had fully formed, a critical question emerged: where did the immense adaptation pressure brought by environmental change go? Traditional organisational theories typically assume that such pressure would drive organisations to undertake adaptive change (March and Simon, 1958), or lead to their decline and elimination when they fail to adapt (Hannan and Freeman, 1984). However, we discovered a thought-provoking phenomenon at School X: this pressure neither drove organisational change nor led to organisational decline, but was instead “ sunk” down to individual teachers through an elaborate mechanism. We define this phenomenon as the “pressure sinking” mechanism. Unlike the concepts of pressure “transmission” (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007) or “diffusion” (Westman, 2001), “pressure sinking” refers to the process whereby high-performance organisations actively transfer environmental adaptation responsibilities that should be borne at the organisational level downwards to individual members through systematic institutional arrangements and cognitive reconstruction. The distinctiveness of this mechanism lies in its proactivity, selectivity, and unidirectionality: organisations do not passively transmit pressure to individuals but actively “sink” pressure through deliberately designed institutional arrangements; this sinking has a clear directionality—flowing unidirectionally from the organisational level, which possesses decision-making power, to the individual level, which lacks voice; whilst maintaining complete stability in the organisation’s core structure. The ingenuity of this mechanism lies in its ability to satisfy external expectations for change (individuals are indeed striving to adapt) whilst protecting the continued operation of organisational inertia. The realisation of pressure sinking is not accidental but achieved through a series of deliberately designed institutional arrangements and cognitive reconstruction processes. When we examined School X’s specific practices in depth, we found that this mechanism is first initiated through the systematic reconstruction of problem attribution. When confronting organisational performance issues such as declining teaching quality, School X’s explanatory pattern exhibited a pronounced individualisation tendency. In analysing recent performance fluctuations, they stated: “The 2022 cohort was the relatively best-performing cohort in recent years; those children were the most diligent students” (SCH-01). This attribution approach simplifies complex educational quality issues into matters of students’ individual “diligence”, thereby avoiding deeper reflection on organisational-level factors. More importantly, this individualised attribution creates a particular causal cognition: success originates from individual effort and qualities, and failure should likewise be borne by individuals. This cognitive framework provides a psychological foundation for transferring adaptation responsibilities—since problems originate at the individual level, solving them naturally becomes an individual responsibility as well. This attribution reconstruction protects the legitimacy of organisational cognitive frameworks. By attributing performance fluctuations to individual factors, the organisation avoids questioning the core “diligent teaching, arduous learning” philosophy, thereby maintaining the authoritative status of existing cognitive patterns. A teaching research group leader’ s reflection revealed how this mechanism operates: “We currently lack a proper teaching research team; during collective lesson planning, everyone does their own thing, lacking in-depth professional dialogue” (TEA-08). Teachers keenly perceived organisational-level problems with the teaching research system, yet management ultimately reinterpreted these systemic deficiencies as individual teachers’ insufficient professional capabilities, requiring resolution through strengthened individual training and requirements. This attribution reconstruction not only operates at the cognitive level but is also concretely embodied in the organisation’s institutional arrangements. School X further reinforced the individualisation of adaptation responsibilities through an ingenious authority-responsibility separation mechanism. Under this arrangement, decision-making power is concentrated at the organisational upper levels or administrative agencies, yet the problems arising during decision implementation and the adaptive work required are primarily borne by individual teachers. This authority-responsibility separation manifests particularly clearly in personnel management. A typical case: “Last year, the deputy director of the Academic Affairs Office was directly transferred elsewhere to become a vice-principal in August; the school had no prior knowledge and no recourse afterwards” (SCH-04). Such sudden personnel changes completely disrupted normal teaching arrangements, yet the school had neither participatory rights in these decisions nor effective contingency plans. The result was that other teachers had to undertake the additional work of compensating and adapting, whilst decision-makers bore no direct responsibility for the consequences of their decisions. A more subtle authority-responsibility separation is embodied in the design and implementation processes of reform measures. School X launched multiple reform initiatives, including “classroom teaching reform projects for each subject” and “mentor-mentee pairing programmes”, which formally responded to external demands for educational innovation. However, the design logic of these reforms still followed traditional management thinking, with genuine innovation and breakthroughs expected to emerge from the concrete implementation process. When reform outcomes proved unsatisfactory, problems were attributed to “inadequate teacher implementation” or “insufficient innovation consciousness” rather than limitations in the reform design itself. The consequence of this institutional arrangement is the creation of a structural asymmetry of responsibility: the organisation enjoys decision-making power and the reputation of reform, whilst individuals bear implementation responsibilities and the consequences of failure. The institutional arrangement of authority-responsibility separation creates a structural foundation for pressure sinking, yet for individuals to genuinely bear these responsibilities requires a deeper legitimation mechanism. School X employed moral discourse to repackage organisational-level structural difficulties as individual moral obligations. When organisational structural problems led to adaptation difficulties, the solution strategy was not to adjust organisational arrangements but to raise moral requirements and dedication expectations for individual members. This moral transformation manifests particularly clearly in the design of teachers’ working conditions. The school ddirectly linked teachers’ economic income to extreme time commitments through institutional arrangements: “Homeroom teachers have to be at school for extended hours almost every day, but according to the system, if they are ill one day and unable to come to work, they cannot receive that payment” (TEA-07). This institutional design essentially uses economic pressure to reinforce moral demands on teachers’ bodies and time: not only must they undertake heavy workloads, but they must also ensure they are never absent under any circumstances. A deeper moral transformation is embodied in the redefinition of teachers’ career choices and development expectations. When excellent teachers consider transferring positions due to remuneration or development opportunities, they often face moral questioning about “lacking dedication” or “betraying the educational cause”, whilst the organisation’s deficiencies in talent retention mechanisms are rarely regarded as problematic. Through the individualisation of problem attribution, the institutionalisation of authority-responsibility separation, and the asymmetric deployment of moral expectations, School X constructed a complete organisational pressure sinking mechanism. In this process, adaptation pressures brought by environmental change were systematically transferred from the organisational level to the individual level, thereby externalising adaptation costs to individual members whilst maintaining organisational inertia. This transfer mechanism explains why high-performance organisations can maintain surface stability when confronting major environmental challenges, whilst simultaneously providing a structural foundation for understanding individual-level occupational burnout phenomena. Structural Teacher Burnout as Individual Consequences Once School X’s pressure sinking mechanism had systematically transferred all adaptation responsibilities to individual teachers, a critical question emerged: how do individual teachers bear structural burdens that exceed their capacity? The occupational burnout experienced by School X teachers exhibits pronounced structural characteristics—what we term “structural burnout” to distinguish it from traditional individual-level psychological burnout conceptualisations— manifested primarily in three dimensions.The primary manifestation of organisational inertia at the individual level is institutionalised resource depletion. By forcibly concentrating multiple adaptation tasks onto individuals, the organisation created a systematic state of resource depletion. This depletion is not temporary work intensification but an extreme demand institutionalised as occupational normalcy. One teacher compared their work situation with their spouse’ s: “My wife’ s income is double mine. My time at school is double hers” (TEA-02). This comparison reflects not merely an extreme imbalance between effort and reward but, more importantly, reveals the extremification of time investment. The fact that a 16-hour working day—“arriving at school after six in the morning and returning home at ten at night” (TEA-01)—has become a routine requirement demonstrates that the organisation has redefined the breaching of individuals' physical and mental limits as a basic occupational obligation. This resource depletion possesses non-negotiable coercive characteristics. The experience of a middle-level school administrator typically demonstrates this coercion: “I am both the grade director and undertake the academic affairs work for the entire school... Last year I managed both Grade 11 and served as the Academic Affairs Director; the workload was immense” (SCH-05). Role accumulation is not a reasonable arrangement based on individual capacity assessment but an inevitable consequence of organisational division of labour logic. When the organisation refuses to undertake structural adjustments to adapt to environmental change, it can only maintain surface functionality by coercively increasing individual burdens. This resource depletion packages the breaching of individuals’ physical and mental limits as manifestations of occupational dedication and professional spirit, making it difficult for teachers to question or refuse, thereby providing moral legitimacy for the maintenance of organisational inertia. The second significant consequence of organisational inertia is the erosion of teachers’ professional identity. When teachers are forced to bear adaptation responsibilities beyond their professional scope, their professional identity and value judgements face fundamental challenges. One teacher pointed out: “Students who truly perform well should possess strong autonomous learning abilities, yet school leadership has filled students' schedules completely” (TEA-04). Educational philosophies formed through teachers’ professional experience are suppressed by organisational management logic. A deeper manifestation of professional identity erosion is the objective decline in professional efficacy. When the organisation refuses to provide teachers with necessary support conditions and working environments, teachers’ professional skills cannot produce expected outcomes, and occupational identity is challenged. Recent educational quality monitoring data reveals: “In the two months from the final mock examination to the Gaokao for Grade 12, School X students improved by an average of only two points... whereas neighbouring schools achieved improvements of ten points or more” (SCH-02). The stark gap between two points and ten points represents not merely a difference in teaching effectiveness but, more importantly, reveals how teachers’ professional skills are constrained under current conditions. This erosion of efficacy stems not from individual capability deficiencies but from the mismatch between organisational environment and professional needs. The third severe consequence is the structural absence of support systems. When the organisation comprehensively transfers adaptation responsibilities to individuals, it simultaneously withdraws its support obligations to individuals, creating an institutional environment of “maximised responsibility, minimised support”. This deficiency manifests in the absence of support for teachers’ professional development. Students’ keen observations reveal the severity of this problem: “Young teachers are not very proficient in their teaching; most of the time they just read from PowerPoint slides” (STU-05). Students can clearly perceive teachers’ professional capability deficiencies, directly reflecting the fundamental failure of faculty cultivation and support systems. Within an environment of organisational inertia, teachers’ professional development is regarded as individual responsibility rather than organisational obligation. New teachers lack effective professional guidance and support, rendering them both unable to meet work requirements and susceptible to intensified occupational burnout through sustained frustration. The formation of this cycle lies in: the organisation reducing management costs by withdrawing support whilst maintaining surface functionality by raising individual requirements, resulting in individuals bearing excessive responsibility burdens under conditions of inadequate support. Through excessive resource consumption, erosion of professional identity, and inadequate support systems, organisational inertia produces consequences at the individual level. Teacher burnout is not an incidental phenomenon in the operation of the educational system but a direct result of current organisational arrangements. The structural character of this burnout lies in its systematicity and persistence: as long as the organisation continues to refuse to bear adaptation responsibilities, physical and mental exhaustion at the individual level will inevitably persist. More importantly, this individual burnout in turn provides new rationalisation grounds for organisational inertia—when teachers perform poorly due to burnout, the organisation can treat this as evidence of “individual capability deficiencies”, further reinforcing the reasonableness of responsibility sinking, thereby forming a self-reinforcing cycle. Longitudinal Evidence of the Pressure Sinking Mechanism Longitudinal data from School X provide quantitative support for the preceding findings. School performance is measured by the number of students achieving the provincial elite university admission threshold, a score line representing the top 20% of Gaokao examinees that serves as the minimum requirement for admission to key universities in the province. As shown in Figure 1 teacher attrition and regional student source changes exhibited synchronised turning points in 2021. Teacher attrition surged from 13 in 2020 to 32 in 2021 (an increase of 146%), whilst the regional cohort of junior secondary graduates declined by 14.1% during the same period. This synchronicity indicates that environmental changes imposed multidimensional shocks on the organisation. Although teacher attrition declined to 18 in 2024, the 2021 peak marked a critical turning point in organisational stability. Figure 2 reveals a paradoxical pattern in student performance. The absolute number of top-performing students cumulatively declined by 19.3% from 2021 onwards, yet the elite university threshold ratio remained at a relatively stable level of 68%-76%. This contrast between declining absolute values and stable relative values reflects the organisation’s efforts to maintain surface performance indicators against a backdrop of declining student quality. Figure 3 integrates trends across three key indicators. The synchronised changes in teacher attrition, environmental pressure, and performance outcomes in 2021 formed a “triple crisis” pattern. This temporal congruence supports the “pressure sinking” mechanism proposed in this research: when confronting environmental shocks, the organisation failed to undertake structural adjustments but instead transferred adaptation pressures to individual members, resulting in the simultaneous occurrence of teacher attrition and performance fluctuations. Discussion and Conclusion Core Findings and Theoretical Contributions Through an in-depth case study of School X, a high-performance county-level school in China, this research constructs a three-level theoretical model of the cross-level transmission of organisational inertia in high-performance organisations (see Figure 4). The model reveals the complete process through which organisational inertia leads to teacher occupational burnout via the “pressure sinking” mechanism. As illustrated in Figure 4, organisational inertia operates through three interconnected levels. The first level concerns the formation and activation of organisational inertia: external threats (the New Gaokao Reform and regional competition) trigger rigid responses in high-performance organisations, which respond to environmental changes by reinforcing historical success experiences (structural foundation) and intensifying control measures (inertia activation), forming a “rationalisation-reinforcement” self-reinforcing cycle. The second level comprises the core process of pressure sinking. Through three mechanisms—individualisation of problem attribution, institutionalisation of authority-responsibility separation, and asymmetric deployment of moral expectations—the organisation systematically transfers adaptation responsibilities from the organisational level to individual members. The third level encompasses structural consequences at the individual level: teachers experience excessive resource consumption, erosion of professional identity, and absence of support systems, ultimately forming structural occupational burnout. This burnout, in turn, further consolidates organisational inertia, forming a self-reinforcing cycle. Quantitative data provide empirical support for this theoretical model. As shown in Figures 1-3, teacher attrition surged by 146% in 2021, whilst external student source pressure intensified by 14.1% during the same period; yet the school maintained relatively stable performance indicators through the pressure sinking mechanism (elite university threshold ratio of 68%-76%). The synchronised emergence of the “triple crisis” validates the temporal associations amongst organisational inertia activation, pressure transmission, and individual burnout within the model. The core theoretical contribution of this research lies in proposing “pressure sinking” as a dynamic mechanism whereby high-performance organisations systematically transfer adaptation responsibilities from the organisational level to individual members, thereby maintaining surface stability whilst externalising structural costs to individual employees. This concept makes three key contributions to existing literature. First, it reconceptualises organisational inertia from static resistance to change (Hannan and Freeman, 1984; Gilbert, 2005) to a dynamic pressure management system. When high-performance organisations confront environmental shocks, they activate systematic responsibility transfer mechanisms rather than undertaking structural adjustments. This finding extends existing concepts of “resource rigidity” (Gilbert, 2005) and “competency trap” (Denrell and Le Mens 2020), revealing the mechanisms through which organisations maintain stability by transferring adaptation burdens to individuals. Unlike traditional views of inertia as passive resistance, this research demonstrates that inertia operates as an active system that strategically redistributes environmental pressures. Second, this research provides cross-level analysis connecting organisational inertia research and individual burnout research. The three-level model explains how organisational-level adaptation difficulties transmit to individual-level work experiences, addressing deficiencies in existing theories’ analysis of cross-level mechanisms. Unlike Demerouti et al.’s (2001 ) JD-R model, which focuses on direct environment-individual relationships, this research reveals the mediating mechanism between organisational adaptation failure and individual burnout. The concept of pressure sinking elucidates the institutional arrangements and cognitive reconstructions through which organisations systematically transfer responsibilities, providing an explanatory framework for understanding why individual burnout in high-performance organisations exhibits pronounced structural rather than individual psychological characteristics. Third, in the field of educational management, this research deepens understanding of the success paradox in high-performance organisations. Building upon Miller’s (1992) Icarus Paradox and Lee and Zhou’s((2014) success frame theory, this research finds that educational organisations face distinctive challenges: past success becomes an obstacle to adapting to change. The resource monopoly position and social expectations of county-level key high schools subject them to stronger identity maintenance pressures, producing more rigid adaptation barriers. This finding adds an institutional dimension to educational organisation theory, demonstrating that the success paradox manifests in unique forms across different organisational contexts. The combination of resource monopoly, social expectations, and historical prestige creates particularly intense pressures for maintaining organisational identity, making county-level key high schools exemplary cases of how institutional advantages can transform into structural constraints. Through the pressure sinking mechanism, organisations achieve dynamic equilibrium, forming a system that simultaneously preserves organisational identity and externalises adaptation costs. This finding reveals the core paradox of high-performance organisations: precisely those factors that created historical success become barriers to adaptive change when environments shift. The most troubling aspect of this mechanism is its self-reinforcing nature—individual burnout caused by excessive pressures is reinterpreted by the organisation as evidence of “individual capability deficiencies”, further legitimating the continued transfer of responsibilities. This discovery offers a new perspective for understanding educational organisational change difficulties and their human costs, providing significant implications for educational management practice. Practical Implications The organisational inertia—pressure sinking—teacher burnout mechanism revealed by this research provides a systematic intervention framework for educational management practice. Based on this complete causal chain, we propose the following practical implications: (a) Establish an organisational learning culture to prevent the formation of inertia foundations. High-performance schools need to proactively resist success ossification byfostering a culture of inquiry that prioritizes continual improvement of leaders’ mental models and encourages diverse perspectives (Senge, 1990, pp.174-175) . Leaders should implement structured experience-sharing sessions that create safe environments for questioning established practices. Most critically, schools need to shift success indicators from singular academic achievement towards diversification, incorporating multiple educational quality indicators that reflect contemporary educational objectives and stakeholder expectations. (b) Design adaptive institutional arrangements to avoid rigid responses. Successful change implementation requires leaders to adopt facilitative rather than directive behavioural patterns, driving organisational change by creating supportive environments and transformational spaces (Higgs and Rowland, 2011). Educational policymakers should avoid “one-size-fits-all” reforms, providing differentiated support pathways for schools in different contexts and with varying capabilities. School leaders must establish participatory decision-making processes that enable teachers to engage in significant policy discussions. This includes developing multidimensional teacher evaluation systems that balance quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback. Organisations should also maintain moderate openness of boundaries to facilitate external learning and innovation. (c) Ensure authority-responsibility alignment to prevent pressure sinking. The root of the “pressure sinking” phenomenon lies in the systematic separation of decision-making authority and implementation responsibility. Organisational support theory research demonstrates a reciprocal relationship between organisational support for employees and employees’ obligations to the organisation; when this reciprocal relationship becomes imbalanced, employees are more susceptible to burnout and turnover intentions (Kurtessis et al., 2017). Educational administrators must provide teachers who bear adaptation responsibilities with corresponding decision-making authority and resource support. This requires establishing systematic reform support mechanisms, including professional development, resource allocation, and technical assistance, whilst creating effective feedback channels to monitor implementation challenges and provide timely adjustments. (d) Reconstruct systemic support systems to alleviate teacher burnout. When organisational inertia produces teacher burnout through resource depletion and erosion of professional identity, schools must fundamentally reconstruct teacher support mechanisms. This involves creating multilevel professional development systems spanning career stages, establishing effective peer collaboration networks, and improving working conditions through adequate resource allocation. The objective is not merely to address current burnout issues but to create sustainable ecosystems that support teacher development and organisational improvement. These interventions form a comprehensive framework addressing organisational inertia at its roots, disrupting pressure transmission mechanisms, and supporting individuals experiencing burnout. By establishing learning cultures, designing adaptive institutions, ensuring authority-responsibility alignment, and reconstructing support systems, educational organisations can break the self-reinforcing cycle identified in this research. Successful implementation requires sustained commitment from educational leaders at all levels and systematic coordination across organisational boundaries. Limitations and Future Research This research employs a single-case design to deeply investigate the organisational inertia mechanisms at School X, providing rich data for theory building, yet it has certain limitations. First, the sample’ s specificity constrains the generalisability of findings. School X’s county-level educational context, Confucian cultural expectations of success, and specific reform timing window may affect the universal applicability of research results. Second, the observation period of 2020-2024 is relatively limited, potentially insufficient to fully reveal the complete evolutionary cycle of organisational inertia and potential self-correction mechanisms. Finally, whilst the qualitative research design facilitates mechanism exploration, it lacks rigorous validation of causal relationships. These limitations provide important directions for future research. Cross-cultural comparative research should validate how the “pressure sinking” mechanism manifests across different educational systems and cultural contexts. Intervention experimental research needs to design targeted organisational interventions, testing the effectiveness of prevention strategies through quasi-experiments and longitudinal tracking. Quantitative validation research should develop measurement instruments to validate the cross-level relationship between organisational inertia and teacher burnout in larger samples. Mechanism refinement research needs to further explore mediating variables and moderating factors in pressure transmission, enriching the explanatory power of the theoretical model. Declarations Data Availability The interview transcripts and qualitative data generated during this study are not publicly available due to the sensitive nature of the information and participant confidentiality agreements. However, anonymised datasets and coding structures are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request for academic purposes. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank all participants from the case school who generously shared their time and insights for this research. We are particularly grateful to the school administrators, teachers, students, and parents who participated in the interviews and provided valuable feedback during the member-checking process. We also thank the county education bureau officials for facilitating access to the research site. Funding This research was supported by Key Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China for Education in 2023 Competing Interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Ethics Approval This study was approved by the Ethics Committee for Human Experimentation of Zhejiang Normal University (Approval No.ZSRT2025292, Approval Date: 20 July 2025). The approval covered all research procedures including participant recruitment, data collection through semi-structured interviews, audio recording of interviews, data storage and anonymization protocols. All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed Consent Written informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study prior to data collection. Consent was obtained during the period from 1 August 2025 to 31 August 2025, at the beginning of each interview session, conducted at times and locations convenient to participants (including school offices and meeting rooms, as appropriate). All participants were informed about the research purpose, the voluntary nature of their participation, procedures involved (individual interviews lasting 45-90 minutes or group interviews lasting 90-120 minutes), data usage, confidentiality measures, and their right to withdraw from the study at any time without consequence. The consent covered participation in interviews, audio recording of interviews, and use of anonymized data for academic publication. For student participants under 18 years of age, written parental consent was obtained in addition to written student assent. References Aldridge, J. M., McLure, F. I. (2024). Preparing schools for educational change: Barriers and supports—A systematic literature review. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 23(3), 486-511. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2023.2171439 Audia, P. G., Locke, E. A., Smith, K. G. (2000). 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7877620","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":613950858,"identity":"43baeedb-abcc-4f61-b43b-5fc4dec3756f","order_by":0,"name":"Wenjing Su","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Zhejiang Normal University","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Wenjing","middleName":"","lastName":"Su","suffix":""},{"id":613950860,"identity":"2496444f-ea02-4db4-80ef-d2de37060499","order_by":1,"name":"XiaoYu Zhang","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Zhejiang Normal University","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"XiaoYu","middleName":"","lastName":"Zhang","suffix":""},{"id":613950869,"identity":"36cca6fe-40c8-4ae5-a178-23809bacd8ba","order_by":2,"name":"YunXing Li","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAAyUlEQVRIiWNgGAWjYBACgxvMDUDSRk6evbHx4QfitDACtRSkGRv2HG42liBey4fDiQ030tsEeIjScruxTZrH4LAx48yHbQwSDHZyug0EtNjfOdgmOcMgXY5dOrHtQQFDsrHZAYIOS2yT+GBgbcw4O7HdQILhQOI2orQkGDAnNtw82CbBQ7SWDwbOQO8zEqvlzsFmyxkGoEBOBAayATF+ud188DbPH1BUHn/48EOFnRxBLUDAghSBBoSVgwAzUclkFIyCUTAKRjAAAMn7SZTUnhxBAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC","orcid":"","institution":"Zhejiang Normal University","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"YunXing","middleName":"","lastName":"Li","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-10-16 12:23:14","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7877620/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7877620/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":105905990,"identity":"0692dd25-e672-4be2-9dc6-78fde87cc286","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-01 10:16:14","extension":"jpg","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":119150,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eTeacher Attrition and Regional Student Population Trends (2020-2024).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeacher attrition increased sharply in 2021 (146% increase from 2020), coinciding with a 14.1% decline in regional junior secondary graduates. This temporal alignment demonstrates how external environmental shocks simultaneously impact organisational stability at multiple levels.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure1TeacherAttritionandRegionalStudentPopulationTrends20202024.jpg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7877620/v1/17f238c054852639a8df101d.jpg"},{"id":105905398,"identity":"7ad49976-6976-4e91-b58a-b8db9c86911d","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-01 10:12:04","extension":"jpg","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":126151,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eTop-tier Student Performance: Numbers and Percentage (2020-2024).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe absolute number of top-performing students (those reaching the provincial elite university admission threshold) declined by 19.3% cumulatively from 2021-2024, whilst the percentage remained stable (68%-76%). This pattern suggests the organisation maintained relative performance metrics despite declining absolute outcomes.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure2TopStudentPerformanceNumbersandPercentage20202024.jpg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7877620/v1/74286e3e3cee7346095b8a26.jpg"},{"id":105843919,"identity":"fa8e21ee-85a1-44d5-8d11-9e19d080f6d2","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-03-31 17:28:57","extension":"jpg","order_by":3,"title":"Figure 3","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":117068,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eSynchronised Triple Crisis Pattern in Organisational Inertia Activation\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThree critical indicators—teacher attrition, environmental pressure, and performance outcomes—converged in 2021, revealing a synchronised crisis pattern. This temporal alignment provides quantitative evidence for the pressure sinking mechanism, demonstrating how external shocks trigger simultaneous responses across organisational levels.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure3SynchronizedTripleCrisisPatterninOrganizationalInertiaActivation.jpg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7877620/v1/a75036ccf379ef236dc17989.jpg"},{"id":105843917,"identity":"0ef05a2f-21bb-4c57-aaf9-f381f47787f3","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-03-31 17:28:57","extension":"jpg","order_by":4,"title":"Figure 4","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":223262,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eTheoretical Model of Organizational Inertia in High-Performance Schools\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis model illustrates the three-level process through which organisational inertia in high-performance schools leads to structural teacher burnout. The top level shows how external threats trigger organisational inertia through the interplay between structural foundation (historical success patterns) and inertia activation (rigid responses). The middle level depicts the pressure sinking mechanism operating through three pathways: problem attribution individualisation, authority-responsibility separation, and moral expectation asymmetry. The bottom level demonstrates the structural consequences at the individual teacher level: resource over-consumption, professional identity erosion, and support system deficiency. The self-reinforcing loop indicates how individual burnout further strengthens organisational inertia, creating a vicious cycle.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure4TheoreticalModelofOrganizationalInertiainHighPerformanceSchools.jpg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7877620/v1/ad5f489364f4c9ebde561743.jpg"},{"id":105907386,"identity":"4d5a16c5-4ece-4aff-b607-72f2942f5105","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-01 10:31:26","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1298904,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7877620/v1/9b2e28e3-c1f1-44cd-b89b-5d377d2992dc.pdf"},{"id":105843915,"identity":"e03ae191-455b-4d67-add6-bcba6b6c2b0d","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-03-31 17:28:57","extension":"docx","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":81989,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"SupplementaryInformation.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7877620/v1/3dd9d11c8f44afd587af9d53.docx"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Organizational Inertia and Teacher Burnout in High-Performance Schools: A Cross-Level Analysis of the Pressure Sinking Mechanism","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eHigh-performance organisations often exhibit paradoxical difficulties in adapting to environmental changes. Audia et al. (2000) found that past success leads organisations to become overly reliant on existing strategies, triggering greater adaptation challenges following radical environmental shifts. This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the education sector: many historically prestigious schools struggle to effectively adapt to educational reforms and intensified competition (Chen and Ke, 2014; Yan, 2015), whilst simultaneously experiencing heightened teacher attrition and widespread burnout (Wang and Bian, 2022; Tian and Guo, 2024). County-level key high schools in China provide a quintessential case of this paradox. Within China’s county-level education system, these schools serve as the sole or primary source of elite education in their regions, concentrating the best students and teachers whilst bearing critical responsibility for channelling talent to top-tier universities. This resource monopoly endows county-level key high schools with exceptionally high social prestige and expectations, whilst simultaneously subjecting them to immense performance pressures. Currently, these once-dominant regional education centres demonstrate intensified adaptation difficulties under new environmental pressures such as the New Gaokao Reform and heightened regional competition (Wang et al., 2025).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough existing research has separately examined organisational inertia and individual burnout, understanding of the cross-level relationship between these phenomena remains limited. Research on organisational inertia has primarily focused on resistance to change at the organisational level (Hannan and Freeman, 1984; Gilbert, 2005), with insufficient attention to how it affects individual members’ work experiences. Teacher burnout research has identified numerous organisational environmental factors (Demerouti et al., 2001; Halbesleben, 2006), yet lacks mechanistic analysis of how organisational adaptation difficulties transmit to the individual level. This theoretical gap constrains our deeper understanding of educational organisations’ difficulties with change and their human costs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThrough an in-depth case study of School X—a century-old county-level key high school confronting the New Gaokao Reform and intensified regional competition—this research investigates how organisational inertia operates in high-performance organisations and its effects on individuals. Employing a mixed-methods design through in-depth interviews with 32 stakeholders and longitudinal quantitative data, the study analyses the process through which organisational inertia leads to teacher burnout. The study reveals that teacher burnout in high-performance schools is not merely an individual psychological issue, but rather a systemic consequence of high-performance organisations systematically transferring adaptation responsibilities to individual members. By connecting organisational and individual analytical levels, this research illuminates how institutional advantages become structural barriers to change, providing practical guidance for educational leaders to identify warning signals and prevent systemic teacher burnout.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Literature Review","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOrganizational Inertia Theory\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe concept of organisational inertia, initially proposed by Hannan and Freeman (1984), refers to organisations’ persistent resistance to changing their core features. The theoretical development has evolved from static structural analysis to dynamic process understanding. Early research revealed self-reinforcing characteristics of organisational behaviour and discontinuous patterns of evolution, demonstrating that organisations can both drive sustained success and trigger adaptation failures during environmental changes (Miller and Friesen, 1980; Tushman and Romanelli, 1985). Subsequent theoretical developments expanded inertia from a single structural dimension to comprehensive analytical frameworks, incorporating concepts such as “core rigidities” (Leonard-Barton, 1992) and “resource rigidity” (Gilbert, 2005), with recent research further providing multidimensional conceptualisation frameworks (Huang et al., 2013).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe relationship between success and inertia presents a critical paradox. Miller’s (1992) Icarus Paradox demonstrates that core strengths, when continuously reinforced, evolve into excessive rigidity, thereby triggering adaptation failures. Audia et al.’s (2000) longitudinal study provided empirical evidence that past success promotes the continuation of established action paths by focusing on the same strategies, leading to greater strategic persistence following radical environmental changes. Supporting research indicates that organisations tend to select strategies with strong initial performance but limited long-term improvement potential, rather than alternatives with greater long-term adaptability (Denrell and Le Mens, 2020). This suggests that success itself may become a barrier to organisational change.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, existing research has primarily focused on the static characteristics of inertia and organisational-level phenomena, with limited understanding of inertia’s dynamic activation processes and cross-level transmission mechanisms. The unique operational patterns of inertia in high-performance organisational contexts remain insufficiently explored, particularly regarding the mechanisms through which organisational-level adaptation difficulties transmit to individual member levels, which require further investigation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp id=\"_Toc20016\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTeacher Burnout: From Individual to Organizational Perspectives\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeacher burnout research has undergone a significant shift from individual attribution towards an organisational perspective. Early research primarily attributed occupational burnout to individual characteristics and demographic variables (Freudenberger, 1974; Chang, 2009), yet individual-focused approaches demonstrated limitations in explaining the prevalence of teacher burnout. Karasek’s (1979) demand-control model marked the beginning of an organisational perspective, with Demerouti et al. (2001) subsequently developing the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, which provided a systematic framework for understanding the organisational mechanisms of teacher burnout. As research has deepened, the core role of organisational support in alleviating teacher burnout has become increasingly prominent. Employees’ perceptions of organisational support directly influence their work conditions (Eisenberger et al., 1986; Halbesleben, 2006). Recent research has further confirmed the critical position of organisational support and principal-teacher relationships in teacher burnout, demonstrating that effective organisational support can alleviate work pressure by redefining the nature of problems (Trinidad, 2025; Dehne et al., 2025). Beyond support mechanisms, organisational structural characteristics such as organisational rigidity, insufficient decision-making participation, and workplace condition issues also exert significant impacts on teacher burnout (Brissie et al., 1988).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe educational reform environment adds new complexity to understanding organisation-individual relationships. Managerialist tendencies during reform processes often subject teachers to dual pressures of increased workloads and reduced autonomy, with even organisational arrangements intended to improve conditions potentially producing unintended negative effects (Wang and Bian, 2022; Zhong et al., 2025; Hamm, 2025). Although the influence of organisational environments on teacher burnout has been widely acknowledged, existing research primarily focuses on direct environment-individual relationships, with limited understanding of the mechanisms through which organisational adaptation difficulties transmit to the individual level.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp id=\"_Toc20713\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Success Paradox in Educational Settings\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs “loosely coupled systems” (Weick, 1982), educational organisations possess structures and incentive mechanisms that inherently favour maintaining the status quo rather than driving change (Cuban, 1988, p. xxi). Existing research has identified multiple factors impeding school reform, including three major barriers—ossified organisational culture, institutional path dependence, and insufficient reform communication (Aldridge et al., 2024)—as well as nine forms of inertia such as conservative tendencies, system stability requirements, and standardisation pressures (Jónasson, 2016). The inherent complexity of educational change involves contradictory factors, goals, and beliefs, thus presenting paradoxical characteristics (Schaap and Vanlommel, 2024).The success paradox in education manifests particularly prominently in high-performance schools. Whilst high-performance secondary schools recognise the negative consequences of high-pressure environments, they continue to value their social and educational advantages, forming a phenomenon of “privileged culture maintenance” (Galloway and Conner, 2015). This pressure to be “the best” places students at high risk of serious adjustment problems, reflecting the core dilemma whereby success itself becomes a burden for continued success (Ebbert et al., 2019). Cross-cultural research demonstrates that rigid “success frames”, whilst facilitating academic excellence, also create negative consequences such as cultural identity alienation, exhibiting structural characteristics similar to the identity burden of high-performance schools (Lee and Zhou, 2014). However, existing research primarily focuses on phenomenological descriptions of the success paradox, lacking in-depth analysis of the specific mechanisms through which high-performance organisations transfer adaptation pressures to individual members.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eResearch Questions and Theoretical Framework\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough both organisational inertia theory and teacher burnout research have become relatively mature, effective integration between them remains lacking. Existing research exhibits three critical theoretical gaps: first, organisational inertia research primarily focuses on static characteristics, with limited understanding of its dynamic activation processes; second, mechanistic analysis of how organisational adaptation difficulties transmit across levels to individual members is absent; third, the unique operational patterns of inertia in the specific context of high-performance organisations have not been systematically explored. Accordingly, this research poses the following core questions:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHow does organisational inertia operate in high-performance organisations?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHow does organisational inertia affect individual members' work experiences?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e"},{"header":"Method","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eResearch Design\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp id=\"_Toc9130\"\u003eThis research adopts an in-depth case study approach (Yin, 2018) to explore the cross-level transmission mechanisms of organisational inertia in high-performance educational organisations. Case study methodology is appropriate for this research because organisational inertia involves multi-level complex processes, whilst existing theories lack systematic explanations of how inertia operates in high-performance organisations and affects individual members. This theoretical gap requires filling through in-depth contextual analysis and inductive theory building.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCase selection follows theoretical sampling logic, seeking a \u0026ldquo;typical case\u0026rdquo; capable of revealing mechanisms of organisational inertia. School X, a century-old county-level key high school in Z Province, satisfies four key characteristics: sustained provincial leadership for 30 years (high-performance history); currently facing external shocks including the New Gaokao Reform and intensified regional competition (environmental turbulence); organisational responses exhibiting marked rigidity (adaptation difficulties); and a 146% surge in teacher attrition since 2021 (observable impacts at the individual level). The convergence of these characteristics makes School X an ideal research setting for understanding \u0026ldquo;how success transforms into inertia\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;how organisational dilemmas transmit to individuals\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eData Collection\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eData collection employed mixed methods, combining in-depth interviews with longitudinal quantitative data. Interviews utilised purposive sampling to ensure coverage of multiple stakeholder perspectives. The 32 interview participants comprised education administration personnel (n=5), school management (n=7), frontline teachers (n=10), student representatives (n=5), and parent representatives (n=5) (see Table 1).\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"584\"\u003e\n \u003cthead\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"4\" style=\"width: 584px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTable 1 Interview Participant Composition and Schedule\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 146px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOrganisational Level\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 279px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFunctional Role\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 96px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCode\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 63px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNumber\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/thead\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 146px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eEducation Administration\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 279px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCounty-level education bureau leadership and department heads\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 96px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eADM-01 to ADM-05\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 63px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 146px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSchool Management\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 279px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSchool leadership and middle management\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 96px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSCH-01 to SCH-07\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 63px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e7\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 146px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFrontline Teachers\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 279px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSubject teachers and teaching research group leaders across disciplines and career stages\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 96px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTEA-01 to TEA-10\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 63px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e10\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 146px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eStudent Representatives\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 279px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eStudents from Grades 10-12\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 96px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSTU-01 to STU-05\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 63px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 146px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eParent Representatives\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 279px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eParents of students from Grades 10-12\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 96px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePAR01 to PAR05\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 63px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n \u003c/table\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eInterviews were conducted in two rounds. The first round focused on the organisational level (education bureau and school management), exploring how the school understood its historical achievements, perceived environmental changes, and what response measures were adopted. The second round delved into the individual level (teachers, students, parents), examining actual changes in the working environment, teachers\u0026rsquo; authentic feelings, and students\u0026rsquo; observations of teaching quality. This tiered design enabled the research to capture different understandings of the same phenomena across levels, revealing cognitive differences and power relations.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInterviews began with open-ended questions (such as \u0026ldquo;What do you consider the greatest challenges the school has faced in recent years?\u0026rdquo; ), followed by in-depth probing based on participants\u0026rsquo; responses. Individual interviews lasted 45-90 minutes, whilst group interviews lasted 90-120 minutes. All interviews were audio-recorded with participants\u0026rsquo; consent and transcribed verbatim. To protect participant privacy, an anonymised coding system was adopted (ADM for administration, SCH for school management, TEA for teachers, STU for students, PAR for parents). For minor students, parental informed consent was obtained in addition to student assent.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLongitudinal quantitative data provided complementary evidence for qualitative findings, including teacher attrition records, student performance data, and regional educational environment indicators from 2020-2024. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eData collection continued until theoretical saturation, the point at which new interviews no longer generated new theoretical insights. Coding analysis showed that by the fifth batch of data (parent interviews), the rate of new code emergence had declined to 3.9%, well below the 10% saturation threshold, confirming that saturation had been achieved (see Supplementary Table S5 for details).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eData Analysis\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp id=\"_Toc15590\"\u003eData analysis followed Charmaz\u0026rsquo;s (2014) constructivist grounded theory framework, comprising three stages: initial coding, focused coding, and theoretical coding.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe initial coding stage involved line-by-line analysis of interview transcripts, allowing concepts to emerge naturally from the data. Researchers continually asked, \u0026ldquo;What is happening here? What does this mean?\u0026rdquo; For example, when management described \u0026ldquo;back then, homeroom teachers spent six and a half days per week at school\u0026rdquo;, this was coded as \u0026ldquo;historical narrative of extreme working hours\u0026rdquo;; when parents expressed \u0026ldquo;School X rarely has students who rank in the provincial top ten anymore\u0026rdquo;, this was coded as \u0026ldquo;expectation gap in elite identity\u0026rdquo;. This process generated 73 initial codes(see Supplementary Table S1).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe focused coding stage integrated initial codes into higher-level categories through constant comparison. Researchers identified patterns across different interview participants and contexts. For instance, multiple codes concerning \u0026ldquo;extreme working hours\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;golden era glory\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;visiting delegations from other schools\u0026rdquo; all pointed towards how the organisation reconstructed history through selective memory, and were therefore integrated into \u0026ldquo;repeated emphasis on historical achievements\u0026rdquo;. Similarly, codes such as \u0026ldquo;sudden personnel transfers\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;frequent teacher turnover\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;lack of school autonomy\u0026rdquo; revealed a systematic separation between decision-making authority and implementation responsibility. The 73 initial codes were ultimately integrated into 14 focused categories(see Supplementary Table S1 for the complete coding structure).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe theoretical coding stage identified relationships amongst focused categories, constructing an explanatory framework. The 14 focused categories were further abstracted into three theoretical dimensions: \u0026ldquo;Ossification of Success Experience and Environmental Change Response\u0026rdquo; (five categories) revealed the formation and activation of organisational inertia; \u0026ldquo;Transfer of Organisational Responsibility to Individuals\u0026rdquo; (four categories) revealed pressure transmission mechanisms; and \u0026ldquo;Multidimensional Predicament of Teachers\u0026rsquo; Work Conditions\u0026rdquo; (five categories) revealed individual-level consequences. These three dimensions together constitute a complete explanation of the \u0026ldquo;pressure sinking\u0026rdquo; mechanism. For detailed coding structures of each theoretical dimension, see Supplementary Tables S2-S4.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo ensure research quality, multiple safeguards were implemented. Two researchers independently coded 30% of the interview materials, with inter-coder reliability tests showing Cohen\u0026rsquo;s kappa ranging from 0.84 to 0.89(see Supplementary Table S6). Member checking invited five key participants to review preliminary findings, with participants confirming that research findings aligned with their experiences. Additionally, data triangulation (interviews, documents, quantitative data) and negative case analysis strategies were employed to enhance credibility. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFindings\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan id=\"_Toc27172\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOrganizational Inertia Formation and Activation\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUpon entering School X, one is immediately struck by its illustrious history\u0026mdash;this century-old institution maintained provincial leadership for 30 consecutive years and cultivated numerous distinguished alumni. Yet it is precisely those factors that once created educational excellence that have transformed into barriers to adaptation when confronting environmental challenges. We found that organisational inertia is not a static structure, but rather a dynamic system constituted by both the ossification of success experiences and activation by external threats.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Our school\u0026rsquo;s education is \u0026lsquo;diligent teaching, arduous learning\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; \u0026mdash;this phrase appeared repeatedly throughout our interviews, from the principal\u0026rsquo;s formal introduction to teachers\u0026rsquo; daily exchanges, from the school\u0026rsquo;s promotional materials to parents\u0026rsquo; expressions of expectations. This consistency itself merits reflection: the phrase has transcended mere description of educational practice to become the cognitive cornerstone of an inertial structure. It not only defines \u0026ldquo;who we are\u0026rdquo; but, more importantly, delineates \u0026ldquo;how we should act\u0026rdquo;. When a senior school administrator recalled the school\u0026rsquo; s golden era, he stated: \u0026ldquo;Back then, homeroom teachers spent six and a half days per week at school, every day from six-thirty in the morning until nine-thirty or ten at night. Teachers and students only had Sunday afternoons off. It was through this level of dedication that we achieved such excellent educational outcomes!\u0026rdquo; (SCH-03). In this narrative, extreme time investment is no longer portrayed as an expedient under specific historical conditions, but reconstructed as an eternal truth leading to success.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis process of reconstruction reveals the first key mechanism of success ossification in high-performance organisations: the sacralisation of selective memory. Organisational memory is not an objective record of historical facts, but rather a subjective construction serving current identity needs (Rowlinson et al., 2010). In reviewing its success trajectory, School X systematically emphasised evidence supporting the \u0026ldquo;diligent teaching, arduous learning\u0026rdquo; narrative whilst overlooking other possible success factors\u0026mdash;such as the relatively superior quality of incoming students at the time, less external competition, and a different evaluation environment. This selective reinforcement ultimately created a false sense of causality: specific behavioural patterns became the sole explanation for success, and any questioning of this pattern was regarded as a betrayal of historical glory. This cognitive ossification further propelled a deeper institutionalisation process\u0026mdash;the pressure to maintain elite identity. The school\u0026rsquo; s social reputation constitutes not only an important resource but has simultaneously become a heavy institutional burden. During interviews, parents\u0026rsquo; disappointment was palpable: \u0026ldquo;School X rarely has students who rank in the provincial top ten or top hundred anymore\u0026rdquo; (PAR-02); \u0026ldquo;There used to be many high scores, but for some reason they\u0026rsquo;ve disappeared in recent years\u0026rdquo; (PAR-01). These expressions reflect not merely dissatisfaction with current performance but, more importantly, reveal an expectation structure: School X \u0026ldquo;should\u0026rdquo; continuously produce top-performing students, and any fluctuation in performance is interpreted as a threat to its identity and status.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe pressure to maintain excellence generated profound organisational constraint effects, creating necessary conditions for the subsequent activation of organisational inertia. The school had to continuously invest substantial resources to maintain its reputational status, and this maintenance behaviour often adopted conservative strategies\u0026mdash;reducing failure risk by reinforcing existing success patterns. The problem is that when the environment undergoes fundamental change, the cost of such risk-avoidance strategies may be the systematic weakening of organisational innovation capacity. The school could neither risk experimenting with new development paths (because the reputational cost of failure was too high) nor calmly accept normal performance fluctuations (because of excessively high social expectations). This dual constraint ultimately trapped the school in the so-called \u0026ldquo;success paradox\u0026rdquo;. This paradox created ideal conditions for the activation of organisational inertia\u0026mdash;when external threats truly arrived, the organisation would respond to challenges with rigid defence rather than adaptive adjustment.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was precisely on this foundation of ossified success that School X\u0026rsquo;\u003cu\u003e \u003c/u\u003es organisational inertia became fully activated when external threats\u0026mdash;the New Gaokao Reform and intensified regional competition\u0026mdash;arrived simultaneously. These multiple shocks created unprecedented tension between the school\u0026rsquo; s ossified success patterns and changing environmental demands. When confronting such tension, organisations facing threats often produce rigid responses (Staw et al., 1981), and School X adopted this response pattern\u0026mdash;when existing cognitive frameworks encountered inexplicable new phenomena, the first reaction was not to revise the framework but to question the legitimacy of the phenomena.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis rigid response was achieved through three mutually reinforcing mechanisms:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst was the technological intensification of control mechanisms. From the perspective of relevant school personnel, the New Gaokao Reform \u0026ldquo;severely undermined our former status as a strong humanities school\u0026rdquo; (SCH-03), redefining environmental change as an \u0026ldquo; unjust deprivation\u0026rdquo; of the organisation\u0026rsquo; s existing advantages. Correspondingly, when young teachers began exhibiting different work philosophies, the school introduced comprehensive technological surveillance: \u0026ldquo;The school installed facial recognition devices at various entrances including the underground car park and canteen... which can automatically record teachers\u0026rsquo; attendance\u0026rdquo; (ADM-04). This technological control not only failed to enhance teacher engagement but instead shifted internal professional identity constraints towards external technological monitoring, falling into a vicious cycle of \u0026ldquo;the more control, the less control\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSecond was the singular intensification of the evaluation system. Faced with parents\u0026rsquo; questioning of the school\u0026rsquo;s performance, the school further strengthened its Gaokao-centred incentive mechanism: \u0026ldquo;Establishing a Gaokao-oriented reward system... prioritising rewards for teaching teams with excellent results\u0026rdquo; (SCH-01). This evaluation rigidity reflected the typical pattern whereby organisations reinforce existing core capabilities to maintain identity continuity when facing identity threats (Leonard-Barton, 1992). Yet the cost was systematic neglect of educational practice complexity and marginalisation of long-term educational quality improvement.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThird was the selective closure of boundary management. Although the school \u0026ldquo;engaged master teachers and external experts to conduct educational training\u0026rdquo; (SCH-02), the logic of these recruitment strategies remained focused on finding external resources that could adapt to the existing culture, systematically excluding any heterogeneous factors that might bring cognitive disruption. This selective openness created a surface appearance of \u0026ldquo;learning\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;improvement\u0026rdquo; whilst actually reinforcing existing thinking patterns and behavioural inertia.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThrough the mutual reinforcement of control rigidity, evaluation rigidity, and boundary rigidity, School X formed a complete organisational inertia system. Within this system, the institutionalised maintenance of historical achievements provided a legitimacy foundation for rigid responses, whilst defensive mechanisms under external threats further consolidated existing success patterns. This mutual reinforcement ultimately created a particular organisational state: unable to abandon past success paths yet incapable of effectively responding to environmental change challenges. However, once an organisational inertia system forms, the pressure for environmental adaptation does not disappear but is instead transferred and redistributed through a distinctive mechanism.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Pressure Sinking Mechanism\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnce School X\u0026rsquo; s organisational inertia system had fully formed, a critical question emerged: where did the immense adaptation pressure brought by environmental change go? Traditional organisational theories typically assume that such pressure would drive organisations to undertake adaptive change (March and Simon, 1958), or lead to their decline and elimination when they fail to adapt (Hannan and Freeman, 1984). However, we discovered a thought-provoking phenomenon at School X: this pressure neither drove organisational change nor led to organisational decline, but was instead \u0026ldquo; sunk\u0026rdquo; down to individual teachers through an elaborate mechanism.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe define this phenomenon as the \u0026ldquo;pressure sinking\u0026rdquo; mechanism. Unlike the concepts of pressure \u0026ldquo;transmission\u0026rdquo; (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007) or \u0026ldquo;diffusion\u0026rdquo; (Westman, 2001), \u0026ldquo;pressure sinking\u0026rdquo; refers to the process whereby high-performance organisations actively transfer environmental adaptation responsibilities that should be borne at the organisational level downwards to individual members through systematic institutional arrangements and cognitive reconstruction. The distinctiveness of this mechanism lies in its proactivity, selectivity, and unidirectionality: organisations do not passively transmit pressure to individuals but actively \u0026ldquo;sink\u0026rdquo; pressure through deliberately designed institutional arrangements; this sinking has a clear directionality\u0026mdash;flowing unidirectionally from the organisational level, which possesses decision-making power, to the individual level, which lacks voice; whilst maintaining complete stability in the organisation\u0026rsquo;s core structure. The ingenuity of this mechanism lies in its ability to satisfy external expectations for change (individuals are indeed striving to adapt) whilst protecting the continued operation of organisational inertia.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe realisation of pressure sinking is not accidental but achieved through a series of deliberately designed institutional arrangements and cognitive reconstruction processes. When we examined School X\u0026rsquo;s specific practices in depth, we found that this mechanism is first initiated through the systematic reconstruction of problem attribution. When confronting organisational performance issues such as declining teaching quality, School X\u0026rsquo;s explanatory pattern exhibited a pronounced individualisation tendency. In analysing recent performance fluctuations, they stated: \u0026ldquo;The 2022 cohort was the relatively best-performing cohort in recent years; those children were the most diligent students\u0026rdquo; (SCH-01). This attribution approach simplifies complex educational quality issues into matters of students\u0026rsquo; individual \u0026ldquo;diligence\u0026rdquo;, thereby avoiding deeper reflection on organisational-level factors. More importantly, this individualised attribution creates a particular causal cognition: success originates from individual effort and qualities, and failure should likewise be borne by individuals. This cognitive framework provides a psychological foundation for transferring adaptation responsibilities\u0026mdash;since problems originate at the individual level, solving them naturally becomes an individual responsibility as well.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis attribution reconstruction protects the legitimacy of organisational cognitive frameworks. By attributing performance fluctuations to individual factors, the organisation avoids questioning the core \u0026ldquo;diligent teaching, arduous learning\u0026rdquo; philosophy, thereby maintaining the authoritative status of existing cognitive patterns. A teaching research group leader\u0026rsquo; s reflection revealed how this mechanism operates: \u0026ldquo;We currently lack a proper teaching research team; during collective lesson planning, everyone does their own thing, lacking in-depth professional dialogue\u0026rdquo; (TEA-08). Teachers keenly perceived organisational-level problems with the teaching research system, yet management ultimately reinterpreted these systemic deficiencies as individual teachers\u0026rsquo; insufficient professional capabilities, requiring resolution through strengthened individual training and requirements.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis attribution reconstruction not only operates at the cognitive level but is also concretely embodied in the organisation\u0026rsquo;s institutional arrangements. School X further reinforced the individualisation of adaptation responsibilities through an ingenious authority-responsibility separation mechanism. Under this arrangement, decision-making power is concentrated at the organisational upper levels or administrative agencies, yet the problems arising during decision implementation and the adaptive work required are primarily borne by individual teachers. This authority-responsibility separation manifests particularly clearly in personnel management. A typical case: \u0026ldquo;Last year, the deputy director of the Academic Affairs Office was directly transferred elsewhere to become a vice-principal in August; the school had no prior knowledge and no recourse afterwards\u0026rdquo; (SCH-04). Such sudden personnel changes completely disrupted normal teaching arrangements, yet the school had neither participatory rights in these decisions nor effective contingency plans. The result was that other teachers had to undertake the additional work of compensating and adapting, whilst decision-makers bore no direct responsibility for the consequences of their decisions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA more subtle authority-responsibility separation is embodied in the design and implementation processes of reform measures. School X launched multiple reform initiatives, including \u0026ldquo;classroom teaching reform projects for each subject\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;mentor-mentee pairing programmes\u0026rdquo;, which formally responded to external demands for educational innovation. However, the design logic of these reforms still followed traditional management thinking, with genuine innovation and breakthroughs expected to emerge from the concrete implementation process. When reform outcomes proved unsatisfactory, problems were attributed to \u0026ldquo;inadequate teacher implementation\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;insufficient innovation consciousness\u0026rdquo; rather than limitations in the reform design itself. The consequence of this institutional arrangement is the creation of a structural asymmetry of responsibility: the organisation enjoys decision-making power and the reputation of reform, whilst individuals bear implementation responsibilities and the consequences of failure.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe institutional arrangement of authority-responsibility separation creates a structural foundation for pressure sinking, yet for individuals to genuinely bear these responsibilities requires a deeper legitimation mechanism. School X employed moral discourse to repackage organisational-level structural difficulties as individual moral obligations. When organisational structural problems led to adaptation difficulties, the solution strategy was not to adjust organisational arrangements but to raise moral requirements and dedication expectations for individual members. This moral transformation manifests particularly clearly in the design of teachers\u0026rsquo; working conditions. The school ddirectly linked teachers\u0026rsquo; economic income to extreme time commitments through institutional arrangements: \u0026ldquo;Homeroom teachers have to be at school for extended hours almost every day, but according to the system, if they are ill one day and unable to come to work, they cannot receive that payment\u0026rdquo; (TEA-07). This institutional design essentially uses economic pressure to reinforce moral demands on teachers\u0026rsquo; bodies and time: not only must they undertake heavy workloads, but they must also ensure they are never absent under any circumstances.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA deeper moral transformation is embodied in the redefinition of teachers\u0026rsquo; career choices and development expectations. When excellent teachers consider transferring positions due to remuneration or development opportunities, they often face moral questioning about \u0026ldquo;lacking dedication\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;betraying the educational cause\u0026rdquo;, whilst the organisation\u0026rsquo;s deficiencies in talent retention mechanisms are rarely regarded as problematic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThrough the individualisation of problem attribution, the institutionalisation of authority-responsibility separation, and the asymmetric deployment of moral expectations, School X constructed a complete organisational pressure sinking mechanism. In this process, adaptation pressures brought by environmental change were systematically transferred from the organisational level to the individual level, thereby externalising adaptation costs to individual members whilst maintaining organisational inertia. This transfer mechanism explains why high-performance organisations can maintain surface stability when confronting major environmental challenges, whilst simultaneously providing a structural foundation for understanding individual-level occupational burnout phenomena.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eStructural Teacher Burnout as Individual Consequences\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnce School X\u0026rsquo;s pressure sinking mechanism had systematically transferred all adaptation responsibilities to individual teachers, a critical question emerged: how do individual teachers bear structural burdens that exceed their capacity? The occupational burnout experienced by School X teachers exhibits pronounced structural characteristics\u0026mdash;what we term \u0026ldquo;structural burnout\u0026rdquo; to distinguish it from traditional individual-level psychological burnout conceptualisations\u0026mdash;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003emanifested primarily in three dimensions.The primary manifestation of organisational inertia at the individual level is institutionalised resource depletion. By forcibly concentrating multiple adaptation tasks onto individuals, the organisation created a systematic state of resource depletion. This depletion is not temporary work intensification but an extreme demand institutionalised as occupational normalcy. One teacher compared their work situation with their spouse\u0026rsquo; s: \u0026ldquo;My wife\u0026rsquo; s income is double mine. My time at school is double hers\u0026rdquo; (TEA-02). This comparison reflects not merely an extreme imbalance between effort and reward but, more importantly, reveals the extremification of time investment. The fact that a 16-hour working day\u0026mdash;\u0026ldquo;arriving at school after six in the morning and returning home at ten at night\u0026rdquo; (TEA-01)\u0026mdash;has become a routine requirement demonstrates that the organisation has redefined the breaching of individuals\u0026apos; physical and mental limits as a basic occupational obligation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis resource depletion possesses non-negotiable coercive characteristics. The experience of a middle-level school administrator typically demonstrates this coercion: \u0026ldquo;I am both the grade director and undertake the academic affairs work for the entire school... Last year I managed both Grade 11 and served as the Academic Affairs Director; the workload was immense\u0026rdquo; (SCH-05). Role accumulation is not a reasonable arrangement based on individual capacity assessment but an inevitable consequence of organisational division of labour logic. When the organisation refuses to undertake structural adjustments to adapt to environmental change, it can only maintain surface functionality by coercively increasing individual burdens. This resource depletion packages the breaching of individuals\u0026rsquo; physical and mental limits as manifestations of occupational dedication and professional spirit, making it difficult for teachers to question or refuse, thereby providing moral legitimacy for the maintenance of organisational inertia.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe second significant consequence of organisational inertia is the erosion of teachers\u0026rsquo; professional identity. When teachers are forced to bear adaptation responsibilities beyond their professional scope, their professional identity and value judgements face fundamental challenges. One teacher pointed out: \u0026ldquo;Students who truly perform well should possess strong autonomous learning abilities, yet school leadership has filled students\u0026apos; schedules completely\u0026rdquo; (TEA-04). Educational philosophies formed through teachers\u0026rsquo; professional experience are suppressed by organisational management logic. A deeper manifestation of professional identity erosion is the objective decline in professional efficacy. When the organisation refuses to provide teachers with necessary support conditions and working environments, teachers\u0026rsquo; professional skills cannot produce expected outcomes, and occupational identity is challenged. Recent educational quality monitoring data reveals: \u0026ldquo;In the two months from the final mock examination to the Gaokao for Grade 12, School X students improved by an average of only two points... whereas neighbouring schools achieved improvements of ten points or more\u0026rdquo; (SCH-02). The stark gap between two points and ten points represents not merely a difference in teaching effectiveness but, more importantly, reveals how teachers\u0026rsquo; professional skills are constrained under current conditions. This erosion of efficacy stems not from individual capability deficiencies but from the mismatch between organisational environment and professional needs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe third severe consequence is the structural absence of support systems. When the organisation comprehensively transfers adaptation responsibilities to individuals, it simultaneously withdraws its support obligations to individuals, creating an institutional environment of \u0026ldquo;maximised responsibility, minimised support\u0026rdquo;. This deficiency manifests in the absence of support for teachers\u0026rsquo; professional development. Students\u0026rsquo; keen observations reveal the severity of this problem: \u0026ldquo;Young teachers are not very proficient in their teaching; most of the time they just read from PowerPoint slides\u0026rdquo; (STU-05). Students can clearly perceive teachers\u0026rsquo; professional capability deficiencies, directly reflecting the fundamental failure of faculty cultivation and support systems. Within an environment of organisational inertia, teachers\u0026rsquo; professional development is regarded as individual responsibility rather than organisational obligation. New teachers lack effective professional guidance and support, rendering them both unable to meet work requirements and susceptible to intensified occupational burnout through sustained frustration. The formation of this cycle lies in: the organisation reducing management costs by withdrawing support whilst maintaining surface functionality by raising individual requirements, resulting in individuals bearing excessive responsibility burdens under conditions of inadequate support.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp id=\"_Toc21464\"\u003eThrough excessive resource consumption, erosion of professional identity, and inadequate support systems, organisational inertia produces consequences at the individual level. Teacher burnout is not an incidental phenomenon in the operation of the educational system but a direct result of current organisational arrangements. The structural character of this burnout lies in its systematicity and persistence: as long as the organisation continues to refuse to bear adaptation responsibilities, physical and mental exhaustion at the individual level will inevitably persist. More importantly, this individual burnout in turn provides new rationalisation grounds for organisational inertia\u0026mdash;when teachers perform poorly due to burnout, the organisation can treat this as evidence of \u0026ldquo;individual capability deficiencies\u0026rdquo;, further reinforcing the reasonableness of responsibility sinking, thereby forming a self-reinforcing cycle.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLongitudinal Evidence of the Pressure Sinking Mechanism\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLongitudinal data from School X provide quantitative support for the preceding findings. School performance is measured by the number of students achieving the provincial elite university admission threshold, a score line representing the top 20% of Gaokao examinees that serves as the minimum requirement for admission to key universities in the province.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs shown in Figure 1 teacher attrition and regional student source changes exhibited synchronised turning points in 2021. Teacher attrition surged from 13 in 2020 to 32 in 2021 (an increase of 146%), whilst the regional cohort of junior secondary graduates declined by 14.1% during the same period. This synchronicity indicates that environmental changes imposed multidimensional shocks on the organisation. Although teacher attrition declined to 18 in 2024, the 2021 peak marked a critical turning point in organisational stability.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFigure 2 reveals a paradoxical pattern in student performance. The absolute number of top-performing students cumulatively declined by 19.3% from 2021 onwards, yet the elite university threshold ratio remained at a relatively stable level of 68%-76%. This contrast between declining absolute values and stable relative values reflects the organisation\u0026rsquo;s efforts to maintain surface performance indicators against a backdrop of declining student quality.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFigure 3 integrates trends across three key indicators. The synchronised changes in teacher attrition, environmental pressure, and performance outcomes in 2021 formed a \u0026ldquo;triple crisis\u0026rdquo; pattern. This temporal congruence supports the \u0026ldquo;pressure sinking\u0026rdquo; mechanism proposed in this research: when confronting environmental shocks, the organisation failed to undertake structural adjustments but instead transferred adaptation pressures to individual members, resulting in the simultaneous occurrence of teacher attrition and performance fluctuations.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion and Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCore Findings and Theoretical Contributions\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThrough an in-depth case study of School X, a high-performance county-level school in China, this research constructs a three-level theoretical model of the cross-level transmission of organisational inertia in high-performance organisations (see Figure 4). The model reveals the complete process through which organisational inertia leads to teacher occupational burnout via the \u0026ldquo;pressure sinking\u0026rdquo; mechanism.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs illustrated in Figure 4, organisational inertia operates through three interconnected levels. The first level concerns the formation and activation of organisational inertia: external threats (the New Gaokao Reform and regional competition) trigger rigid responses in high-performance organisations, which respond to environmental changes by reinforcing historical success experiences (structural foundation) and intensifying control measures (inertia activation), forming a \u0026ldquo;rationalisation-reinforcement\u0026rdquo; self-reinforcing cycle. The second level comprises the core process of pressure sinking. Through three mechanisms\u0026mdash;individualisation of problem attribution, institutionalisation of authority-responsibility separation, and asymmetric deployment of moral expectations\u0026mdash;the organisation systematically transfers adaptation responsibilities from the organisational level to individual members. The third level encompasses structural consequences at the individual level: teachers experience excessive resource consumption, erosion of professional identity, and absence of support systems, ultimately forming structural occupational burnout. This burnout, in turn, further consolidates organisational inertia, forming a self-reinforcing cycle.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuantitative data provide empirical support for this theoretical model. As shown in Figures 1-3, teacher attrition surged by 146% in 2021, whilst external student source pressure intensified by 14.1% during the same period; yet the school maintained relatively stable performance indicators through the pressure sinking mechanism (elite university threshold ratio of 68%-76%). The synchronised emergence of the \u0026ldquo;triple crisis\u0026rdquo; validates the temporal associations amongst organisational inertia activation, pressure transmission, and individual burnout within the model.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe core theoretical contribution of this research lies in proposing \u0026ldquo;pressure sinking\u0026rdquo; as a dynamic mechanism whereby high-performance organisations systematically transfer adaptation responsibilities from the organisational level to individual members, thereby maintaining surface stability whilst externalising structural costs to individual employees. This concept makes three key contributions to existing literature.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, it reconceptualises organisational inertia from static resistance to change (Hannan and Freeman, 1984; Gilbert, 2005) to a dynamic pressure management system. When high-performance organisations confront environmental shocks, they activate systematic responsibility transfer mechanisms rather than undertaking structural adjustments. This finding extends existing concepts of \u0026ldquo;resource rigidity\u0026rdquo; (Gilbert, 2005) and \u0026ldquo;competency trap\u0026rdquo; (Denrell and Le Mens 2020), revealing the mechanisms through which organisations maintain stability by transferring adaptation burdens to individuals. Unlike traditional views of inertia as passive resistance, this research demonstrates that inertia operates as an active system that strategically redistributes environmental pressures.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSecond, this research provides cross-level analysis connecting organisational inertia research and individual burnout research. The three-level model explains how organisational-level adaptation difficulties transmit to individual-level work experiences, addressing deficiencies in existing theories\u0026rsquo; analysis of cross-level mechanisms. Unlike Demerouti et al.\u0026rsquo;s \u003cu\u003e(2001\u003c/u\u003e) JD-R model, which focuses on direct environment-individual relationships, this research reveals the mediating mechanism between organisational adaptation failure and individual burnout. The concept of pressure sinking elucidates the institutional arrangements and cognitive reconstructions through which organisations systematically transfer responsibilities, providing an explanatory framework for understanding why individual burnout in high-performance organisations exhibits pronounced structural rather than individual psychological characteristics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThird, in the field of educational management, this research deepens understanding of the success paradox in high-performance organisations. Building upon Miller\u0026rsquo;s (1992) Icarus Paradox and Lee and Zhou\u0026rsquo;s((2014) success frame theory, this research finds that educational organisations face distinctive challenges: past success becomes an obstacle to adapting to change. The resource monopoly position and social expectations of county-level key high schools subject them to stronger identity maintenance pressures, producing more rigid adaptation barriers. This finding adds an institutional dimension to educational organisation theory, demonstrating that the success paradox manifests in unique forms across different organisational contexts. The combination of resource monopoly, social expectations, and historical prestige creates particularly intense pressures for maintaining organisational identity, making county-level key high schools exemplary cases of how institutional advantages can transform into structural constraints.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThrough the pressure sinking mechanism, organisations achieve dynamic equilibrium, forming a system that simultaneously preserves organisational identity and externalises adaptation costs. This finding reveals the core paradox of high-performance organisations: precisely those factors that created historical success become barriers to adaptive change when environments shift. The most troubling aspect of this mechanism is its self-reinforcing nature\u0026mdash;individual burnout caused by excessive pressures is reinterpreted by the organisation as evidence of \u0026ldquo;individual capability deficiencies\u0026rdquo;, further legitimating the continued transfer of responsibilities. This discovery offers a new perspective for understanding educational organisational change difficulties and their human costs, providing significant implications for educational management practice.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePractical Implications\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe organisational inertia\u0026mdash;pressure sinking\u0026mdash;teacher burnout mechanism revealed by this research provides a systematic intervention framework for educational management practice. Based on this complete causal chain, we propose the following practical implications:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(a) Establish an organisational learning culture to prevent the formation of inertia foundations. High-performance schools need to proactively resist success ossification byfostering a culture of inquiry that prioritizes continual improvement of leaders\u0026rsquo; mental models and encourages diverse perspectives (Senge, 1990, pp.174-175) . Leaders should implement structured experience-sharing sessions that create safe environments for questioning established practices. Most critically, schools need to shift success indicators from singular academic achievement towards diversification, incorporating multiple educational quality indicators that reflect contemporary educational objectives and stakeholder expectations.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(b) Design adaptive institutional arrangements to avoid rigid responses. Successful change implementation requires leaders to adopt facilitative rather than directive behavioural patterns, driving organisational change by creating supportive environments and transformational spaces (Higgs and Rowland, 2011). Educational policymakers should avoid \u0026ldquo;one-size-fits-all\u0026rdquo; reforms, providing differentiated support pathways for schools in different contexts and with varying capabilities. School leaders must establish participatory decision-making processes that enable teachers to engage in significant policy discussions. This includes developing multidimensional teacher evaluation systems that balance quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback. Organisations should also maintain moderate openness of boundaries to facilitate external learning and innovation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(c) Ensure authority-responsibility alignment to prevent pressure sinking. The root of the \u0026ldquo;pressure sinking\u0026rdquo; phenomenon lies in the systematic separation of decision-making authority and implementation responsibility. Organisational support theory research demonstrates a reciprocal relationship between organisational support for employees and employees\u0026rsquo; obligations to the organisation; when this reciprocal relationship becomes imbalanced, employees are more susceptible to burnout and turnover intentions (Kurtessis et al., 2017). Educational administrators must provide teachers who bear adaptation responsibilities with corresponding decision-making authority and resource support. This requires establishing systematic reform support mechanisms, including professional development, resource allocation, and technical assistance, whilst creating effective feedback channels to monitor implementation challenges and provide timely adjustments.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(d) Reconstruct systemic support systems to alleviate teacher burnout. When organisational inertia produces teacher burnout through resource depletion and erosion of professional identity, schools must fundamentally reconstruct teacher support mechanisms. This involves creating multilevel professional development systems spanning career stages, establishing effective peer collaboration networks, and improving working conditions through adequate resource allocation. The objective is not merely to address current burnout issues but to create sustainable ecosystems that support teacher development and organisational improvement.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp id=\"_Toc5701\"\u003eThese interventions form a comprehensive framework addressing organisational inertia at its roots, disrupting pressure transmission mechanisms, and supporting individuals experiencing burnout. By establishing learning cultures, designing adaptive institutions, ensuring authority-responsibility alignment, and reconstructing support systems, educational organisations can break the self-reinforcing cycle identified in this research. Successful implementation requires sustained commitment from educational leaders at all levels and systematic coordination across organisational boundaries.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLimitations and Future Research\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis research employs a single-case design to deeply investigate the organisational inertia mechanisms at School X, providing rich data for theory building, yet it has certain limitations. First, the sample\u0026rsquo; s specificity constrains the generalisability of findings. School X\u0026rsquo;s county-level educational context, Confucian cultural expectations of success, and specific reform timing window may affect the universal applicability of research results. Second, the observation period of 2020-2024 is relatively limited, potentially insufficient to fully reveal the complete evolutionary cycle of organisational inertia and potential self-correction mechanisms. Finally, whilst the qualitative research design facilitates mechanism exploration, it lacks rigorous validation of causal relationships.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese limitations provide important directions for future research. Cross-cultural comparative research should validate how the \u0026ldquo;pressure sinking\u0026rdquo; mechanism manifests across different educational systems and cultural contexts. Intervention experimental research needs to design targeted organisational interventions, testing the effectiveness of prevention strategies through quasi-experiments and longitudinal tracking. Quantitative validation research should develop measurement instruments to validate the cross-level relationship between organisational inertia and teacher burnout in larger samples. Mechanism refinement research needs to further explore mediating variables and moderating factors in pressure transmission, enriching the explanatory power of the theoretical model.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eData Availability\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe interview transcripts and qualitative data generated during this study are not publicly available due to the sensitive nature of the information and participant confidentiality agreements. However, anonymised datasets and coding structures are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request for academic purposes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAcknowledgements\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe authors would like to thank all participants from the case school who generously shared their time and insights for this research. We are particularly grateful to the school administrators, teachers, students, and parents who participated in the interviews and provided valuable feedback during the member-checking process. We also thank the county education bureau officials for facilitating access to the research site.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFunding\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis research was supported by Key Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China for Education in 2023\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCompeting Interests\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe authors declare that they have no competing interests.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEthics Approval\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis study was approved by the Ethics Committee for Human Experimentation of Zhejiang Normal University (Approval No.ZSRT2025292, Approval Date: 20 July 2025). The approval covered all research procedures including participant recruitment, data collection through semi-structured interviews, audio recording of interviews, data storage and anonymization protocols. All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eInformed Consent\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritten informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study prior to data collection. Consent was obtained during the period from 1 August 2025 to 31 August 2025, at the beginning of each interview session, conducted at times and locations convenient to participants (including school offices and meeting rooms, as appropriate). All participants were informed about the research purpose, the voluntary nature of their participation, procedures involved (individual interviews lasting 45-90 minutes or group interviews lasting 90-120 minutes), data usage, confidentiality measures, and their right to withdraw from the study at any time without consequence. The consent covered participation in interviews, audio recording of interviews, and use of anonymized data for academic publication. For student participants under 18 years of age, written parental consent was obtained in addition to written student assent.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eAldridge, J. M., McLure, F. I. (2024). Preparing schools for educational change: Barriers and supports\u0026mdash;A systematic literature review. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 23(3), 486-511. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2023.2171439\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eAudia, P. G., Locke, E. A., Smith, K. G. (2000). 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Burnout and its relationship with depressive symptoms in primary school teachers under the \u0026ldquo;Double Reduction\u0026rdquo; policy in China. Frontiers in Public Health, 12, Article 1420452.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1420452\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":false,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"humanities-and-social-sciences-communications","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"palcomms","sideBox":"Learn more about [Humanities \u0026 Social Sciences Communications](http://www.nature.com/palcomms/)","snPcode":"41599","submissionUrl":"https://submission.springernature.com/new-submission/41599/3","title":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Nature AJ","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false},"keywords":"pressure sinking, organisational inertia, teacher burnout, high-performance schools, educational leadership","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7877620/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7877620/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"High-performance schools confront a critical paradox: the very factors that once drove their success may become barriers to adaptation when facing environmental changes such as educational reforms and intensified competition. Using a century-old county-level key high school as a case study, this research employs a mixed-methods approach, combining semi-structured interviews with 32 stakeholders and longitudinal quantitative data analysis from 2020 to 2024, to investigate how organisational inertia operates in high-performance educational institutions and its impact on teacher burnout. We identify a “pressure sinking” mechanism: high-performance organisations maintain surface stability by systematically transferring adaptation responsibilities from the organisational level to individual members, whilst imposing structural costs on employees. Analysis reveals that organisational inertia operates through three processes formation and activation, pressure transfer mechanisms, and individual-level consequences, ultimately resulting in structural teacher burnout characterised by resource depletion, erosion of professional identity, and inadequate support systems. By connecting organisational inertia theory with individual burnout research through the concept of “pressure sinking”, this study provides a cross-level transmission model that explains how organisational adaptation failures systematically translate into individual work experiences, offering empirical guidance for educational leaders to identify warning signals and prevent systemic teacher burnout in high-performance schools.","manuscriptTitle":"Organizational Inertia and Teacher Burnout in High-Performance Schools: A Cross-Level Analysis of the Pressure Sinking Mechanism","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-03-31 17:28:53","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7877620/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-04-24T07:16:07+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"109670402574935551807975350292842886691","date":"2026-04-09T06:40:27+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"242155477681436098744706327409552551547","date":"2026-04-08T17:32:33+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewersInvited","content":"","date":"2026-03-27T03:53:09+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorAssigned","content":"","date":"2026-01-09T10:42:16+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvited","content":"","date":"2025-11-05T19:54:00+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"checksComplete","content":"","date":"2025-10-31T07:01:51+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"submitted","content":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","date":"2025-10-31T06:57:51+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"humanities-and-social-sciences-communications","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"palcomms","sideBox":"Learn more about [Humanities \u0026 Social Sciences Communications](http://www.nature.com/palcomms/)","snPcode":"41599","submissionUrl":"https://submission.springernature.com/new-submission/41599/3","title":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Nature AJ","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"580bcddb-56c8-4275-a05b-615fd6c6a0b3","owner":[],"postedDate":"March 31st, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"under-review","subjectAreas":[{"id":65329890,"name":"Social science/Education"},{"id":65329891,"name":"Biological sciences/Psychology"},{"id":65329892,"name":"Social science/Psychology"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-03-31T17:28:53+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-03-31 17:28:53","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7877620","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7877620","identity":"rs-7877620","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}