This study examines whether strategic management helps explain the association between employee well-being proxies and an observable performance indicator in Oman’s private higher education sector, with attention to sustainable higher education development. Using an archival quantitative secondary-data design, the study draws on official higher education databases, national policy documents, institutional performance records and publicly available reports. Employee well-being is assessed through observable indicators of staff stability, workload-related conditions, professional-development visibility and institutional support mechanisms. Strategic management is represented through planning visibility, quality assurance, governance documentation and performance-monitoring systems. Because comparable institution-level staff data are not publicly available, the study uses a sector-year archival dataset and interprets the results cautiously. Descriptive statistics, correlations, exploratory regression estimates and robustness checks are reported. The empirical dependent variable is annual total-enrolment growth, which is treated as a narrow observable indicator of organisational performance rather than a complete measure of institutional performance. The single-predictor lagged models do not support a direct independent association between employee well-being proxies and total-enrolment growth (β = 2.453, p = 0.682) or between strategic-management capacity and total-enrolment growth (β = -8.824, p = 0.189). The combined model improves explanatory fit, while the interaction model is retained only as an illustrative pattern because the usable sector-year sample is very small. The findings should therefore be read as preliminary sector-level archival evidence, not as institution-level causal proof. The study contributes to sustainable higher education governance by showing that staff-related conditions, planning systems, quality assurance and data visibility should be considered together when assessing institutional resilience and development-oriented reform in Oman.

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