Compassionate Concern as an Informal Institution: A Multiple-Case Study of Anti-Bullying Governance in Primary and Secondary Schools

Abstract

School bullying generates negative externalities for victims, peers, and schools by undermining student well-being, classroom order, and long-term human capital formation. Yet anti-bullying governance in primary and secondary education is still largely organized around formal rules, surveillance, and sanctioning. This study examines whether value guidance grounded in Confucian compassionate concern can function as an informal institutional resource that reduces moral distance, strengthens a culture of care, and activates peer intervention. Using directed content analysis of five anti-bullying cases from Chinese primary and secondary schools, the study identifies a recurrent mechanism linking moral-emotional activation, the institutionalization of caring norms, and direct, indirect, and spontaneous peer intervention. The findings indicate that compassionate concern and care ethics should not be understood merely as private virtues. When translated into school charters, classroom routines, and symbolic recognition, they operate as collective norms that complement formal governance. From an economic perspective, such norms can lower the monitoring burden placed on teachers, mitigate bystander inaction as a collective-action problem, and improve the efficiency and sustainability of anti-bullying governance. The study contributes to the literature by integrating Confucian ethics, care ethics, and an informal-institutions perspective in the analysis of school governance. It also provides a culturally grounded explanation of how moral values can be embedded in organizational routines to generate cooperative behavior. Policy implications suggest that anti-bullying strategies should move beyond punishment-centered design and invest in empathy-based curricula, peer-support systems, and norm formation as low-cost complements to formal regulation.