EV-0009
The academic name for a promise you chose to make
Rousseau, D. M. (1989). Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 2(2), 121–139 · Source
What this entitles us to say
There is an established organizational-behavior construct — the psychological contract — defined as an individual's belief in reciprocal obligations arising from promises voluntarily made and accepted, which is very close to the CDL definition of faithfulness as a commitment freely entered into.
What it found
Rousseau formalized the psychological contract as an individual's beliefs about reciprocal obligations between themselves and their organization, and drew a line that matters to us: psychological contracts are made of promises, not expectations. A promise is something conveyed and accepted; an expectation is something merely hoped for. The contract is also held at the level of the individual — two people doing the same job can hold different contracts with the same employer.
Why it matters here
This is the closest academic construct to CDL's definition of faithfulness — a commitment freely entered into and upheld daily. Three parts line up almost exactly: the agreement is voluntary, it is promissory rather than hoped-for, and the obligation runs both ways.
It also does real work for the naming decision of 26 August. The construct is organized around the agreement, not around task completion. That is the distinction between Faithfulness and Discipline, and it is the reason "Follow-Through" was the wrong word — see EV-0013 for the empirical version of the same separation.
The limits
This is a conceptual paper, not a finding — it defines a construct, it does not prove anything about outcomes. The construct is also contested and unevenly measured; see EV-0012. And note the direction: almost all of this literature studies the employer breaking promises to the employee, not the reverse.
What we do not say
Anything numeric. This paper defines a construct; it reports no effect on anything.