“Ethical Values and Commitment Towards Achieving Excellence: A Study On Public Boarding School Students In Malaysia”.

Boarding school is perceived to be the springboard for success. Public boarding school students in Malaysia are mostly selected based on outstanding academic performance and co-curricular achievements. These students will eventually join local and higher learning institutions and be groomed as future leaders and/or employees for business and non-business (i.e. public) organizations. In today’s competitive global arena, it is critical for leaders and employees to internalize good moral values for sustainability. It is equally important for them to display commitment towards excellence to achieve organizational effectiveness and success. While substantial studies on ethical values and employee commitment have been conducted from organizational behaviour perspectives, there are limited studies that link the importance of ethics with commitment towards excellence in a school environment, pertinent for leadership development. This study has been conducted to assess the ethical level of students at three established public boarding schools in Malaysia. A structured questionnaire is developed to measure three universally accepted moral values: Integrity, Self Control and Courage. The study has also examined boarding school students’ commitment to strive for excellence. Correlation tests have been conducted to investigate whether there is a significant relationship between ethical values and commitment for excellence. Overall results have shown that the boarding school students in the research locality possess high Self Control, moderately high Courage and moderately high Integrity. The study has also found that there is consistent and significant correlation between ethical values and students’ commitment level to strive for excellence. Higher Integrity, Self Control and Courage will lead to higher Commitment for Excellence.