3M's CSR: An Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility Approaches

This report provides an in-depth analysis of 3M's corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. It begins with an introduction to 3M, highlighting its establishment in Singapore and its growth, followed by an overview of CSR perspectives, including normative, integration, instrumental, political, and emergent views. The report then details 3M's CSR approaches, such as its 2025 goals, ethical business practices, and commitment to sustainability. It examines specific initiatives like the Woodlands center, which focuses on environmental technologies, and the launch of new sustainable products. The report also covers 3M's investments in sustainability solutions, the Pollution Prevention Pays program, and community impact programs. Furthermore, it discusses 3M's stakeholder engagement, including its approach to material assessment and engagement with government agencies, investors, consumers, and other corporations. The report concludes with recommendations for improving 3M's CSR efforts, such as establishing a governing committee to monitor progress and review CSR approaches.

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Introduction
3m has founded in the year 1966 in Singapore. In starting, 3M had only 8 employees in the
starting. In the recent time, it has more than 1600 employees by serving the needs of regional,
local and global customers. The Tuas Plant of 3M has started in the December 2009 in
Singapore. 3M Singapore vision is to ensure the research and development centre for its
major growth (Smith and Langford, 2009). Due to this, it gives emphasis on the multi-
disciplinary approach in the several areas including optics, electronics, solution, coatings, and
adhesive. In Singapore, it has achieved various awards such as Community Spirit Excellence
Award, Singapore Health Corporate Excellence Award, Top 5 Private Employer of Choice,
and Singapore Quality Award. In the report, discussion has been carried on the CSR
approaches taken by 3M. It has effectively ensured the use of sustainability and CSR
approaches for the welfare of the society. At the end of the report, recommendation has been
given in order to gain the better understanding regarding the CSR approach.
Perspective of CSR
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept that is used to describe a company’s efforts
to improve society in some effective way. These efforts can range from donating money to
non-profits to implementing environmentally friendly policies in the workplace. Corporate
social responsibility has become most popular in today’s business organisation. As per the
Normative perspective of CSR. It is the obligation of every business person to adopt such
policies as well as follow those actions that work in the values and objectives of the
organisation. as per the integration perspective, social responsibility of any business
encompasses the legal, social, discretionary as well as ethical expectation that society have in
a given period of time. Instrumental perspective on the other hand is seen as the investment
where managers are determining the proper level of CSR investment. From the political
perspective, CSR is said to be the business activities that turn the business into provider of
public goods where the public organisations are unwilling or unable to fulfil the role.at last,
emergent perspective of CSR states that it is a permanent issue including several areas of
debate in the practice and theory of management. These are the different perspective related
to corporate social responsibility that is required to be undertaken by the organisation.

CSR initiatives and approaches undertaken by 3M
3M has expanded its wings in Singapore for more than 50 years. It seeks to improve b the
lives of people. it is founded in the year 1966 by starting with only 8 employees. Recently, it
has more than 1600 employees by having local capabilities to serve the regions, local as well
as global customers. The presence of 3M in Singapore has two manufacturing plants at Tuas
and Woodlands. It tends to provide the equal opportunity to its employees without
discriminating them on the basis of colour, race, sex, gender identity, disability, national
origin.
In its sustainability and CSR work, it has made the 2025 goals. It is designed to build the
Millennium Development Goals in the three aspects including social, economic, and
environmental. 3M has also recognised as the most integrity and ethical company for doing
business. It has taken its place in the list of World’s most ethical Companies. In order to
achieve the competitive advantage (Vilanova Lozana Jand Arenas, 2009). Leaders of 3M
tend to promote as well as create such environment where ethical business conduct and
compliance are conducted by leading with the help of example. In Singapore, it has also
scored the highest in corporate responsibility category and citizenship. It is also building on
the sustainability leadership as well as announcing the formal requirement that will include
the new product. The new product will also base on the sustainability approaches in order to
ensure the CSR responsibility toward the society.
The Woodland centre of 3M in Singapore also give emphasis on addressing the issues in
urbanization., the centre of around $10 million also give emphasis on delivering the clean
water, clean air, and energy efficiency. It is also give focus on the three major areas. Energy
technology is the first one that includes the smart energy efficiency, management, as well as
productivity improvement. Information communication technology is the other one that use
in the sensing analytics and communication. Centre also tackle the water and environmental
technologies such as residential, green material, air filtration, as well as industrial water
treatment. By ensuring the Centre, it is able to use the technology in effective manner. It
believes that effective use of innovative technologies; it is easy to ensure the success of
several sustainability and CSR programmes.
3M launches around 1000 new product each other by concerning the sustainability and CSR
value commitment. It is therefore a purpose driven business that has the aim of helping its
customers fir achieving CSR and sustainability goals. It is also found that 3M has scored high

in the creativity and innovation by making the best use of its resources. The commitment
towards the environment include the water and energy saving, recyclability, renewable
materials, responsible sourcing, as well as reuse. The commitment toward such elements
helps the environment to solve social and environmental problem such as reduction in the
greenhouse gas emission, improvement in the air quality as well as improvement in the
worker safety. The leaders of CSR develop the proprietary approach for driving the social
changes. For example- 3M has designed the health communities program in order to bring the
change in areas of health, education, as well as environment by influencing the academic
leaders and government. These programs are developed for the welfare for the society in a
huge level. This program of 3M also includes the young people through the national
partnership with several leading not for profit organisation.
3M has also undertaken the initiative for empowering the next generation of engineers and
scientists by supporting the education initiative. 3M Corporate social responsibility
framework is also seen in the company culture that can be seen for the value statement as
well as CSR issues by several 3 functions including safety, health, human resources,
community affairs as well as quality function that tends to market the many products into the
society. Awareness as well as employee engagement around sustainability encourage the
partnership within the 3M community. By ensuring the partnership with its customer
effectively, it makes use of science every day for improving the lives as well as solves the
toughest challenge of society. 3M also make significant investment in the sustainability
solution. It believes that the positive investment in the sustainability approaches helps the
companies to focus on the several core areas. For example- In the year 2017, it has invested
around $1.9 billion. It has also stated that it has also launched the pioneering program known
as Pollution Prevention Pays that tends to empower the 3M people for finding innovative
ways to make the company more effective. The project started by 3M has also prevented the
two million tons of water, air, and waste pollution.
Under this approach of CSR, it has also invested around 70 million in order to support the
environmental, educational, as well as other programmes of the communities. 3M impact is
also one such program started by 3M for the entire communities around world for helping the
needs. In Singapore, 3M is providing the lives to the Singapore people for more than 50
years. It has therefore grown into the employees of 1600. In its CSR programme, its ensure
that the plastic waste product is processed into the several type of resins for creating the
electrical casing, wall switch covers, bags, stationary, stripping bands, and some other

household products (Bruhn and Zimmermann, 2017).Due to this, it has also won the several
awards for safety and pollution prevention. In the year 2017 also, it was awarded with the
Singapore Health Award for ensuring its strong commitment toward the environment.
3M believes in using the multiple goals model that posits the role for social values in the
company decisions. Similar to this model, company has several goals beyond the value of
shareholder without giving major focus to the monetary gains. However, it has gained huge
growth and benefits by using this model at the time of CSR (Lyra, Barbosa De Souza,
Verdinelli and Lana, 2017). It has also helped the society and people of the varied field in
numerous ways by undertaking the multiple goal models. There are times it is able to fulfil
the various sustainability issues at a time. It is being stated that the model of multiple goals
prove to be successful only when company have the best team to handle different tasks at a
given point of time. However, 3m is able to manage the working within its company
(Voegtlin and Greenwood, 2016).
It has stated the wide number of plastic is being thrown into the landfills in recent time. by
considering this point, companies like 3M look for the activities related to landfill waste. In
developing countries also, it is passionate about making the progress future. In these
countries, children do not have proper source of education (Andriof and Waddock, 2017).
Due to this, it is providing the educational facilities to the underprivileged children with the
creative education models. By doing this, it tends to enhance their skill using apprenticeship
program. Besides this, 3M is also contributing for strengthening the innovation ecosystem.
The partnership several NGO is also done by 3M for addressing the real social needs
(Vanleer, Jain and Squires, 2016).
As per stakeholder theory of CSR, it states that what people are affected by the decision of
the company in favour of the company. For example: it has taken the material assessment as
the significant component of the sustainability strategy whether the problems of issues are
result of its own initiative (Thomas, 2018). It includes both the internal and external
perspective in order to develop and operate the corporate strategy. For this, it also ensures the
stakeholder engagement strategy in order to advance the sustainability across the world. The
major stakeholder that is affected by its action are government agencies, investors,
consumers, subject matter expert as well as other corporations (Harrison, Freeman and
Abreu, 2015). It also ensures the use of stakeholder engagement strategy for evolving. For
example: 3M employees across the world engage itself frequently through the sustainability

events and communication with the diverse topics (Reavis, Tucci and Pierre, 2017). The
diversified topic such as education, charity programmes is being started by 3M in several
developing countries. It believed in contributing toward the society equally by uplifting the
several unprivileged class of people.
By ensuring the community aspect of the social responsibility, it is found that 3M has the
strong track of giving the back the things that it has taken from the communities. By ensuring
this, it gives the high emphasis on the human and health services, environment, as well as
education. The example of social responsibility effort is the strong support of the 3M for the
united way including product donation during the natural disasters. It also ensures the active
participation in the several retiree volunteer programs (Brammer and Pavelin, 2016). IN this
way, an active approach to the corporate social responsibility is the significant element of the
company’s effort. By effective using the active approach, it is beneficial for the organisation
to word toward the benefit of the society.
Recommendations
It is true that 3Mis making great contribution toward the CSR programmes and sustainability.
Besides this, it can improve varied aspect of CSR. It can ensure the governing committee that
will help it in recommending and evaluating the suitable non-governmental agencies. Besides
this, the governing committee will also monitor the progress of the CSR initiative that
company has decided to work upon. It is true that the review of CSR approaches proves to be
more effective for the organisation. In each country, it can also monitor and review the
progress of its CSR and sustainability initiative on quarterly basis. By using this, it can ensure
the change management approach that will help it in bringing the required changes. The
effective utilisation of change management by the concerned team will help it in minimising
the weaknesses.
It is found that the identification of social priorities for the investment in community is not
only enough. Leadership therefore comes from providing customers, employees, and external
stakeholder with the essential deep information regarding the social issue through research,
social media and stories. It is also recommended to 3M for ensuring the use of Smarter Planet
as its best and effective practice (Darnall, Henriques and Sadorsky, 2010). It should therefore
use the sophisticated project that lead to more enlightened and intelligent world. This will
help it in developing the new solutions that are relatively significant for the sustainability

issues. It is rightly stated that people are capable of effectively and efficiently achieve only
one goal at a time. As compare to this, 3M give emphasis on the multiple social issues at a
time. Due to this, it sometimes cause disturbance in the working of the company. Therefore,
it should start working on one social issue. After this, it will be effectively able to compare
the desired result with the results achieve.
It can also assist the several stakeholders of its company by providing them training for the
CSR programme (Freeman and Velamuri, 2006). This will help in assuring them the things
that they are required to perform in order to engage themselves best with the CSR
approaches. It is also recommended to 3m for providing education and several other facilities
to the children of backward areas. This will help in bringing the several positive aspects for
the organisation.
Conclusion
In the limelight of above discussion, it can be concluded that 3M is effectively working
across different parts of the world. The significant investment in several CSR and
sustainability issues has helped the company to make the good approach toward CSR. By
making the different strategies related to CSR, it is effectively able to run its business across
the world. In Singapore, 3M is able to gain the huge public recognition and awards from the
government due to its significant contribution toward the society. It always believes in giving
something better to the society in return. In this way, Corporate social responsibility proves to
be the biggest advantage for the company when it is done effectively with the effective
consideration.

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