Companies are vital agents in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. One key role that businesses can play in achieving the 5th Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality is implementing training programs for their women executives so they can reach top corporate leadership positions. In this paper, we test the effectiveness of an Authentic Leadership Development (ALD) program for women executives. By interviewing 32 participants from this ALD program and building on authentic leadership theory, we find that this program lifts women participants’ self-efficacy perception, as well as their self-resolution to take control of their careers. The driver for both results is a reflective thinking process elicited during the program that leads women to abandon the stereotype of a low status role and lack of self-direction over time. Through the relational authenticity developed during the program, women participants develop leadership styles that are more congenial with their gender group, yet highly accepted by the in-group leader members, which enhances their social capital. After the program, the women participants flourished as authentic leaders, were able to activate and foster their self-esteem and social capital, and enhanced their agency in career advancement, increasing their likelihood of breaking the glass ceiling.

The main objective of this article is to provide empirical evidence on the energy efficiency measures currently being implemented by primary and secondary schools in Spain, to attempt to identify the characteristics that could explain the different levels of adoption and to propose public policies aimed at the promotion of energy savings. Using the information provided by the Observatorio del Centro Educativo Espanol (2011), which delivers data for 1969 public, private and charter Spanish schools, it has been found that the adoption of energy efficiency measures in schools is positively correlated with other indicators representative of the economic management competence of the school, and that levels of adoption of energy efficiency measures are much higher in private institutions. This conclusion of this first study holds after controlling for the influence of other variables related to the adoption of such measures, including the size of the centre, the year in which the last reform was carried out, the geographical area and the average temperature.

Traditionally, business risk management models have not taken into consideration household composition for the purposes of credit granting or project financing in order to manage the risk of default. In this research, an improvement in the risk management model was obtained by introducing household composition as a new exogenous variable. With the application of generalized reduced gradient nonlinear optimization modeling, improved consumption units are determined according to the different types of household size and the age of their members. Estimated household economies of scale show a consistent pattern even in the year 2020, corresponding with the COVID-19 outbreak. Thus, an adjusted estimation of the household equivalized disposable income is obtained. Based on this more accurate equivalized income estimation, acceptable debt levels can be determined. The estimation of probabilities of default allows the household risk of default to be managed. In this way, a novel model is proposed by incorporating household composition into credit risk evaluation using fuzzy clustering and optimization techniques. Companies can assess the expected loss of a credit exposure through a model that can help them in the process of making evidence-informed decisions.