::: New Year Special :::

Keeping Promises

Syed Saad Andaleeb

“And fulfill (every) covenant. Verily! The covenant will be questioned about.” (17:34)
- Al Quran

“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become action. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; for it becomes your destiny.”
- Contested

“He who promises more than he is able to perform, is false to himself; and he who does not perform what he has promised, is a traitor to his friend.”
- George Shelley

It was a long time ago. I was a college student earning a tidy scholarship. Life was good: movies, Chinese food, buying records and books, a personal bank account, etc. Not having to ask for money from parents had its own privileges and provided a sense of esteem and confidence.

But good times have a way of being short-lived. Somebody older and well known stopped by one day to talk to me. He was getting married. The reason he wanted to talk to me was for a loan to make some wedding purchases. Because the next day was a Friday and he was unable to raise cash from a small business that he owned, would I do him the favor of giving him a check? He promised to return the money on Monday when he was expecting a payment from a client.

Being a family friend, I dutifully wrote out a check to him, literally giving him all my savings. Forty-plus years have gone by, but the Monday never came. And I have never forgotten -- especially how someone I thought I could trust, wrenched out a secure piece of my world and shattered my faith in the word “promise.” The scar he left in me endures to this day.

Many years later our paths did cross; but he did not even broach the subject. Given the years that had flown by, I didn't bring it up either. But let's leave it at that. Instead, let us ponder the more egregious promises that are made every day and broken with reckless abandon that have ramifications far greater than what I had suffered.

Husbands and wives affirm their faith in their relationship. But one thinks nothing of one's dalliances and clandestine meetings while the other heart smolder in agony, splintering homes into pieces, never to be repaired or rebuilt.

Business owners make promises to their employees or clients, but think nothing of failing to deliver. And when the business goes under, the owners wonder why their employees or clients abandoned them in such unforgiving fashion.

Government functionaries promise many services they are duty-bound to deliver. But many don't, unless they see some gain in it for themselves; then they wonder why they have such an odious and slithering image among the constituencies they were chosen to serve.

Politicians make tall claims about how they will change the lives of the common people, but think nothing about doing so during their tenure of office. Then they wonder why they are kicked out with such vengeance and held in such lowly esteem once they are out of office.

Nations, too, make promises to other nations, often through their diplomats, vowing deliverance from a difficulty. Far too often there is little serious intent of delivering; and this treachery ravages many lives: from children, to the able-bodied, to the infirm. Yet, they think nothing of it, snickering slyly and maliciously among compatriots for having lied smoothly. And when things go wrong between the nations, the pledging nation is outraged.

Much commerce is also transacted today on promises: A young child is torn away from the security of her village home on the promise of a safe job in the city, only to end up in a brothel. A youth is promised a decent job overseas in exchange for big bucks, only to find that the job was not as promised, if at all. Property is sold on fake documents and false promises, the money never to be retrieved.

Then there are the children, sent to faraway schools, who end up being battered and abused: their dreams of a good life distorted beyond their imagination. And the newly-wed young girl, promised a happy life, finds her dreams entangled in unbearable torture and deprivation in her new home. Even parents can raise the hopes of their children with promises but dash them on the slippery slopes of denial.

To gauge the extent of broken promises that human beings inflict on other fellow human beings, one only needs to turn to the newspaper or other media reports. Broken promises afflict every segment of the human race. One even wonders what the word “human” really means anymore with all the imposters, cheats, and liars that belong to the race.

One of the worst experiences in a person's life is a broken promise. Promises mean something because they suggest some benefit or the alleviation of some difficulty. When a promise is not honored it is deeply troubling, and the loss of trust it engenders leads to many consequences: resentment, anxiety, anger, frustration, ill feelings, and damaged relationships; it can even ravage one emotionally and physically. Broken promises destroy the fabric of trust a vital component of our lives. When there is trust, there is order and security; when trust is lacking, uncertainty and an unexplained fear grips the mind and immobilizes action.

In general, people will ignore a broken promise and repair trust after scrutinizing its intent and when its consequences are minimal: a missed meeting, a forgetful moment, or just plain pressures of life. But when it becomes a pattern and when its consequences are serious, the lack of respect and arrogance displayed by the perpetrators are of great concern.

Promises can, in fact, affect social order because the accompanying trust has social meaning and preserves the balance and harmony that enables people to formulate expectations and meet their needs. Without trust, the sense of harmony is lost and one is unable to form even basic expectations. Examples abound for despotic and corrupt regimes with high trust deficits where expectations are routinely smothered and where very little flourishes except the lives of the despots and their sycophants, while the vibrancy of general life withers slowly but surely.

Modern day scholars affirm the crucial role of trust or social capital in the advancement of nations. An economist defines it as a public good necessary for the success of economic transactions; a sociologist describes trust as essential for stable social relations; and a moral philosopher contends that trust is a social good; when it is destroyed, societies falter and collapse.

Clear in these voices, as in the scriptures, is the idea of keeping promises and establishing good faith as the foundation for building great societies. To ensure advancement, the people of a nation must build trust at its core. While the responsibility rests on all, greater responsibility lies on those who have greater power in a relationship. At home the parent must keep promises made to the child; the husband to the wife (or vice versa), and the older sibling to the younger ones.

At the workplace, the employer must deliver on the promises made to the employees, the teacher to the students, the bureaucrat to their constituencies, and the officer to the jawans. At the national level, the politician must display impeccable integrity; acts of broken promises and trust betrayal are never forgotten and some day there “will be” accountability and possibly retribution.

Even between nations, the ones with greater resources and power must make and keep promises to build the level of trust necessary to form basic expectations of each other. A promise broken is an expectation made unstable that clouds the possibilities of future engagement for mutual gain. The stance oderint dum metuant (Latin for “let them hate so long as they fear”) that some of the more powerful nations seem to favor today has never been, nor shall it ever be, a stable basis for conducting exchanges between “civilized” nations. Instead it can exact a very heavy price when the time is opportune.

Each promise made and kept builds trust and enables society at all levels to flourish. And the formula for keeping promises is simple: do as you say and say as you do! Let's bring in the New Year with the resolve to stay true to our promises.

Dr. Syed Saad Andaleeb is Professor of Marketing, Sam & Irene Black School of Business, The Pennsylvania State University, Erie.