Liberalización del sector bancario y persistencia de las formas organizativas

Abstract

The Spanish banking sector is traditionally composed of the types of entities: commercial banks, savings banks and credit unions, whose behavior was controlled by strict regulations. However, in the last quarter of the 20th century, a liberalizing process eliminated the differences in the regulations that controlled such entities. As a consequence, all the organizations within the sector became legally entitled to perform the same strategic options and offer services to the same groups. Previous academic contributions suggest that entities should have significantly changed their behavior and become more homogeneous, causing differences among organizational forms to disappear. However, this analysis shows that the differences among organizational forms were still present. In this paper, we provide an explanation of the reason why, after deregulation, the different organizational forms persisted in spite of the significant changes that occurred in the way they operate. Results show important consequences for regulators and their work