Coping with assessment disruption: Business educators’ psychological and ethical responses to generative AI

As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) transforms higher education, faculty face new psychological and ethical tensions in assessment. This qualitative study examines how business educators in Thailand perceive and respond to the disruption that GenAI has introduced into academic evaluations. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with ten university instructors, the study identifies four major themes: reliance on traditional methods to protect academic integrity, concern over the erosion of students’ critical thinking, frustration with pedagogical inconsistency, and exploratory attempts at meaningful AI integration. These findings reveal that educators’ responses are shaped not only by technological change but also by emotional strain, identity conflict, and ethically charged decisions around academic integrity, fairness, and responsible AI use within their institutions. The study contributes to social-psychological understandings of how faculty cope with educational transformation, highlighting the need for holistic institutional frameworks that address emotional readiness, ethical guidance, and pedagogical innovation in the age of AI.