Incorporating Sustainability into Organizational Culture: An Exploration of Challenges and Solutions in the Swedish Banking Sector

Abstract: Sustainability has emerged as a critical aspect of business operations globally, encompassing environmental impact, social responsibility, and governance factors. With its ability to allocate financial resources, the banking sector plays a unique role in achieving global sustainability goals. This makes it vital for banks to prioritize sustainability and embed it as a core value due to customer demands and socially conscious employees. However, despite the growing recognition of sustainability, there is a significant gap in integrating sustainable practices within the corporate cultures of banks. This study aims to explore how the Swedish banking sector incorporates sustainability principles into its organizational culture. It seeks to identify the primary obstacles these banks encounter in their sustainability efforts and examine their strategies to overcome these barriers. The result gained from this study will provide practical insights for banks to adopt a more integrated approach to sustainability across their values and practices. It will also contribute valuable knowledge to the management field in terms of shedding light on the correlation between sustainability and organizational culture. Based on the research findings, this study identified seven main challenges: lack of interest and motivation, difficulties in concretizing, limited time and resources, insufficient availability of appropriate measuring tools, lack of business relevance, resistance to cultural change, and knowledge gaps. Moreover, the most prominent solutions were: education, the appointment of sustainability ambassadors, active engagement of managers, alignment with values, norms, and behavior, and the implementation of effective measuring tools. Furthermore, this study highlights the importance of internal drivers, such as personal values and interests, in engaging employees in sustainability efforts. While external drivers, such as market demands and regulatory requirements, contribute to integrating sustainability into strategies, their impact on shaping corporate culture is relatively less significant.