Proactive managers: True accountability or simple reputation search (washing)

Purpose: Our interest in this research lies in examining how it affects business reputation both, on the one hand, its strategic behaviour, as well as its communication and information dissemination policies, mainly in social and environmental matters. In particular, in this paper we analyze three topics that are widely discussed in the literature: Strategically proactive managers (SP), Sustainability Disclosure (SD) and Reputation (R). More specifically, we will consider how to quantitatively measure these topics, which we will argue when developing both the theoretical constructs and the hypotheses. Design/Methodology/Approach: To perform this empirical analysis, we used Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Since our analysis is explanatory, more specifically, our research model was tested using the technique of Partial Least Squares (PLS), primarily when pursuing consistent estimates of the relationships between constructs (Henseler, 2018). Findings: In our findings, there are a positive and significant relationship between SP-SD and SD-Reputation, so the strategy on proactive sustainability has a positive effect on reputation, the company must disseminate information on its sustainable policies and actions (not only economic, but social and environmental), being SD a moderating variable between strategy and reputation. However, the relationship between SP-Reputation is rejected because although the relationship is positive, it is very low and not significant. There are many practical and social implications in this work, mainly that an awareness of the added value of the sustainable business model is more than simply reporting (actions beyond words) (Pajuelo & Duarte, 2019) and reputation and legitimation. Its true value lies in the absence of a significant direct relationship between Strategic Proactivity and Reputation, if it is not for the mediating effect of the Sustainable Disclosure, that is, the disclosure being a moderating variable between the strategy and reputation.