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This chapter examines Slovenia’s failed attempt to develop a national corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy via multi-stakeholder partnership. It also discusses the potential reasons for this failure.

This research is grounded in the idea of CSR as a ‘politicised’ concept, acknowledging the importance of the institutional setting and institutional support in diffusing CSR. This empirical research is based on a descriptive case study approach and a qualitative thematic analysis of the data. The data sources are IRDO institute documents, the minutes of the Partnership for National CSR Strategy provided by the Network for Social Responsibility of Slovenia and semi-structured interviews with various actors such as government and local representatives, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), companies and journalists.

Although the multi-stakeholder Partnership for National CSR Strategy, which was initiated by NGOs and other stakeholders, existed from 2011 to 2013, it later fell apart due to various factors, the most important being a complete lack of support on the governmental side, with the government being the actor with the executive power to implement and promote CSR policies at the national level.

The chapter provides an insight into the drawbacks of attempting to set a national CSR policy agenda and discusses the reasons for these drawbacks.

This chapter discusses the importance of the economic, political, and social context in which multi-stakeholder networks can foster the national CSR debate. It recognises the role of CSR in co-regulating public policies and the importance of strong engagement among relevant stakeholders and public authorities.

The aim of this chapter is to explore sustainability research and findings in Slovenia, including Slovenia’s paths toward sustainable future on three different levels: situational or macro-level, transformational or mezzo-level and action formation or micro-level. Changes toward sustainability can only be made through the interaction of all levels. Besides the economic situation, both environmental and social dimensions are also important parts of sustainability. Slovenian consumers tend to be aware of sustainability issues and have formed positive attitudes about this concern, which is also reflected at the macro-level indices, indicating Slovenia’s sustainable position compared to other countries in Eastern and Southern Europe. Some sustainability guidelines, albeit not necessarily systematic activities, are adopted by companies and thus are moving the Slovenian economy forward in this area. This chapter can serve as a basis to develop some general pointers of how sustainability in Slovenia can be further addressed and developed.

This chapter analyses the evolution of strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR). Despite extensive research on the strategic aspects of CSR, the absence of a well-defined theoretical concept has hindered the development of the field. The authors build on the four mechanisms that conceptually distinguish strategic CSR from CSR in general: enhancing firm reputation, increasing stakeholder reciprocation, mitigating firm risk, and strengthening innovation capacity. By using bibliometric methods, we analyze the main topics, references, and sources of papers, found in the Web of Science Core Collection database. The analysis of the strategic CSR field discusses main topics through three periods (1991–2009, 2010–2014, and 2015–2019). The findings help identify the mapping of conceptual space of the strategic CSR field and suggest grounds for continuing the debates on how to advance the micro-level perspectives on CSR.