EV-0011
What breaking an agreement costs, measured across the literature
Zhao, H., Wayne, S. J., Glibkowski, B. C., & Bravo, J. (2007). Personnel Psychology, 60(3), 647–680 · Source
What this entitles us to say
Meta-analytic evidence that a perceived broken promise at work is related to mistrust of management, felt violation, lower job satisfaction, lower organizational commitment and higher intention to leave — with weaker relationships to citizenship behavior and in-role performance, and none to actual turnover.
What it found
A meta-analysis of psychological contract breach against eight work-related outcomes, organized through affective events theory: breach leads to affect (felt violation, mistrust of management), affect shapes attitude (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions), and attitude shapes effectiveness (citizenship behavior, in-role performance, actual turnover).
Breach was related to all outcomes except actual turnover. The strongest associations were with the affective reactions — violation and mistrust. Job satisfaction showed a strong negative association, organizational commitment a moderate one, and turnover intentions a moderate positive one.
Why it matters here
It is the business case for this trait, and it is a stronger one than it first looks. The largest effect is on mistrust of management — which means the research puts Faithfulness and Trustworthy in the exact relationship the framework already claims: break the agreements, and what you lose is trust. Trust is the yield; faithfulness is one of the things that buys it.
The weaker link to in-role performance is worth stating out loud rather than hiding. People whose leader breaks promises largely keep doing the job. What they stop doing is the discretionary part — and they stop believing the next thing they are told.
The limits
Correlational. Breach is measured by asking the person who felt it, usually at the same moment as the outcome, which inflates the relationships and cannot establish direction — an unhappy employee may reinterpret the past as a broken promise. Breach was related to every outcome examined except actual turnover: people say they will leave far more than they leave. Verified to abstract level, so the qualitative pattern may be cited but individual coefficients may not be quoted from here; use EV-0012 for published ranges, and get the full text before printing any figure.
What we do not say
"Breaking promises costs you X% in productivity." The performance link is the weakest one in the study. Nor "it drives turnover" — this analysis found no relationship with people actually leaving, only with saying they intend to.