Ethical values and commitment towards achieving excellence: A study on public boarding school students in Malaysia

The boarding school is perceived to be a springboard for success. Public boarding school students in Malaysia are mostly selected based on outstanding academic performance and co-curricular achievements. They will eventually join higher learning institutions and be groomed as future leaders and employees. In today's competitive global arena, it is critical for leaders and employees to internalise good moral values and display commitment towards excellence to achieve organisational effectiveness and sustainability. Substantial studies on ethical values and employee commitment have been conducted from organisational behaviour perspectives. However, there are limited studies that link the importance of ethics with commitment towards excellence in a school environment, pertinent for leadership development. To address the gap, this study was conducted to assess the ethical level of students at three established public boarding schools in Malaysia. A structured questionnaire was developed to measure three universally accepted moral values: integrity, self-control and courage. The study also examined students' commitment towards striving for excellence. Correlation tests were conducted to investigate whether there was a significant relationship between ethical values and commitment to excellence. Overall,the results show that the boarding school students studied in this research possessed high self-control, moderately high courage and moderately high integrity.The students' overall commitment to excellence was high. The study also found a consistent and significant correlation between ethical values and students' level of commitment to strive for excellence.Higher levels of integrity, self-control and courage will lead to higher commitment to excellence. © Universiti Putra Malaysia Press.