Change Management as a Tool to Implement Gender Equality: The Spanish Banking Sector Case

Introduction

Companies are continually searching for competitive advantages to adapt to changing situations. One of their main priorities is to adjust their business operations and strategies to align with the 17 Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations in its 2015 summit “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” (Tsalis et al., 2020), and to integrate sustainability to guarantee their long-term success (Redman, 2018).

One of the SDGs that has generated the most interest is goal 5, which is dedicated to promoting gender equality (United Nations, 2019b). To address this challenge, firms develop and implement CSR strategies, and how they adopt and embed CSR practices is a crucial competitive strategic factor that motivates new ways to achieve better CSR performance (Rao & Tilt, 2016).

Companies are the best drivers to facilitate the transition to a sustainable society because they concentrate more power than even weaker countries (Brown, 1981). This explains the increasing importance of the study of their sustainability (Chang et al., 2017). On one hand, small and medium enterprises and non-governmental organizations are the actors that boost social engagement. On the other hand, multinational enterprises use institutional voids as drivers to develop new inclusive business models and invest in education, training, and health services to improve their employees' capabilities on this subject (Arnold, 2018).

More ambitious frameworks and specific policies should be developed to face the current sustainability challenge (Queisser, 2016). Companies need to manage change optimally to gain a competitive advantage to drive them to organizational success (Todnem By, 2008). And, where reducing women's workplace discrimination is a key challenge and the potential source of that competitive advantage (Gartzia, 2021).

Although there are numerous studies on gender equality, and CM with the CSR implications, the connection between the concepts remains largely unexplored. Therefore, there is a need for more empirical studies (Nadeem et al., 2017; van den Brink & Benschop 2018) and more meaningful research to help policymakers to make decisions about gender equality (Ferreira, 2015). This study aims to narrow the research gap between the elements of CSR in companies and CM to implement gender equality policies through the experience of companies in the Spanish financial sector when implementing their CSR policies.

This study explores how CM may be used as a resource when implementing corporate sustainability strategies involving gender equality policies. In this way, this study aims to evaluate the impact that CM has on the achievement of gender equality in financial companies, as well as to measure the real impact of their actions toward gender equality. Six case studies were examined using a longitudinal analysis methodology by analysing the sustainability reports for the six leading banking companies in Spain. The analysis tries to understand how those banks have developed gender equality policies in the last ten years. The banking sector was selected because it has a more homogeneous reference population, and it is one of the main engines that drive the achievement of a more diverse and inclusive economy (Birindelli et al., 2018; Delgado-Piña et al., 2020).

The ten most important categories related to gender equality in the working and professional environment were identified from different sources such as the Demetriades (2007); Dijkstra & Hanmer (2000); World Economic Forum (2020) created for CM. Finally, the data was obtained and analyzed using the CADQAS software Atlas.ti tool.