Malaysia is striving to be a developed nation by the year 2020 as well as realize the aspirations of Dasar Transformasi Nasional within an open economy supporting globalization. The government, through its socio-economic and development policies has been promoting entrepreneurship and small businesses to sustain the nation’s economic growth in a challenging competitive global ecosystem. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in the Malaysian economy and are considered to be the backbone of the nation’s industrial development. Latest statistics show that 99.6% of local businesses are micro, small and medium enterprises. As much as they play an important role in driving the nation’s economic growth, a quantitative research study by the Malaysian Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism, Integriti Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 2014 has significantly found that ethics has not been comprehensively applied in the conduct of small and micro-businesses in Malaysia. In addition, these businesses lack exposure to ethics training and education. As business ethics is important to sustain customers’ loyalty, avoid legal suits as well as drive foreign direct investment for the nation’s economic and societal wellbeing, there is a critical need to educate small and micro-businesses on ethics. Consequently, a collaborative government-academic national level research project was initiated in mid-2017 to develop a Malaysian business ethics module, Etika Perniagaan Malaysia (EPM) to address this gap. This paper shares the framework, method and content development of the business ethics module to establish and train the Professional Practitioners Group (PPG) from public and private institutions as well as related non-governmental institutions to impart business ethics knowledge to small and micro-businesses in Malaysia through active learning methods. The module hence aspires to create consciousness on the importance of ethics and its application in business for economic and social sustainability.

Consciousness is deep in meaning and utilised in many different ways. It is often used to scientifically explain one’s ability to discriminate stimuli, report information, monitor internal states or control behaviour. This paper investigates the concepts and paradigms of consciousness from scientific, Western and religious perspectives with focus on Islamic dimensions as a discourse. A library research is conducted and online resources are utilised to review literatures from multi-disciplines before arriving at a conclusion. Discursive paradigms of consciousness recognise it as an abstract concept. Consciousness is beyond cognition. While cognitive thoughts, theories and ideologies relate consciousness to the five senses of humans, the concepts of ‘will’, awareness (i.e. being aware of things happening around a human being) and having a sense of purpose or intent in undertaking actions are relevant in the study of consciousness. A conscious person will use his/her senses to conduct life as civilised beings. However, by linking the body and the soul in explaining consciousness from Islamic viewpoints, consciousness is the awareness of oneself driven by his/her commitment and conviction as a servant of God and total submission to the Creator. Consciousness from Islamic contexts indeed relates to iman (faith) and taqwa (God consciousness).

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The public sector, operated through local/ state governments is the most important instrument in management and administration of a nation. Apart from delivering services and sustaining national development, it is also the social institution entrusted to restore law and order of a nation. These functions and responsibilities indicate direct relationships with morality, ethics and social justice. The district office is the closest level of the government to the people. Hence, issues of ethics and integrity are clearly seen as the people whom they serve directly and who are affected by the government. This paper reports on a pilot study conducted at a district office in Malaysia to investigate employees’ responses on awareness initiatives to imbue ethics and integrity at the workplace through a questionnaire with mixed methods. This study has positively found that the district office employees are highly aware of ethics and integrity. They perceive that all initiatives taken at the workplace to create ethical awareness are highly effective and their understanding of ethics and integrity is high (Mean: 4.34 and 4.25 respectively). Posters are viewed to be the most effective medium to create awareness, followed by websites and signages. Superiors, as role models have taken a committed responsibility to remind subordinates through various channels of communication on ethical values and integrity. However, there are still employees who do not seem to be aware of the information provided on ethics. In addition, less than half of the respondents (46.3%) are directly involved in the launched ethics campaigns in office. The study findings will draw some insights on effectiveness of initiatives taken at ground level to create ethical awareness among the public-sector employees as Malaysia transforms her socio-economic landscape in the globalization era.

The Malays are the main ethnic group of Malaysia, representing 50.4% of the total population and 63.1% of the population distribution in Peninsular Malaysia. They are among the identified bumiputera, together with the Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia and indigenous groups in Sarawak and Sabah. This discourse study relates to the cultural identity of the Malays and investigates their ethics and values from social constructionist approaches. Cultural identity includes the cultural background, religion/spirituality and socialisation. This research concurs with other studies that the Malay culture was characterised by a mix of animism, Hinduism and Buddhism, although the Malays have been identified with Islam as their religion. There are still remnants of animistic and Hinduistic beliefs and practices in the Malay Muslim life, especially in the practice of adat. While adat is a cultural and legally-defined element of the Malays in identity, the foundation of Malay ethics and value system is budi-Islam, adab and akhlak.