Interview with Salil Tripathi

August 2009

As part of its effort to integrate further debate on ethics and corporate responsibility into the MBA curriculum, the Allwin Initiative at Tuck recently hosted an interview with Salil Tripathi, Policy Director for the Institute for Human Rights and Business and an alumnus of the Tuck School.

In discussion with Erin Henry, Salil addresses the question of what is driving companies to take leadership ahead of governments in some areas of human rights.

Salil notes that "at the cynical level one could argue that they are doing it because it’s good publicity for them. But that’s not a fair comment on the companies because they are much more serious than that.

Clip duration: 07:13

"Another [reason] is risk mitigation, that if they’ve done certain things right from a perspective of due diligence they’re less likely to be held accountable when things go wrong. The third is reputational advantage.

"The fourth ...is to stay on the right side of the law, but I also think that a lot of CEOs and a lot of people in the corporate social responsibility movement within companies want to do it because it’s the right thing to do.”