Hondo and Amtrak Cases of Corporate Social Responsibility

Amtrak Case Study

The tragic incident at the Big Bayou Canot Bridge saw the deaths of nearly 50 people after a barge hit the bridge and caused the rail line to shift minutes before a speeding Amtrak train was set to cross. Heavy fog made the conditions necessary for such an incident to take place, but sensors recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board could have prevented the disaster.

Who are the stakeholders in this case? There are several stakeholders in this case: Amtrak is one since it was the train operating service. Because Amtrak was a nationalized service however, receiving subsidies from the federal government, it should be considered that the U.S. government and taxpayers are all stakeholders in this case. Chesapeake System Railroads (CSX) is another and was a Fortune 500 transportation company. CSX is a stakeholder because it owned the track over Big Bayou Canot Bridge. Warrior and Gulf Navigation (WGN) is a third stakeholder, a medium-size operator of barge movers. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was a stakeholder, as its recommendations for outfitting bridges with sensors had gone unheeded. The U.S. Coast Guard was a stakeholder as it had cleared the waterways for travel. The towboat captain and pilot were stakeholders as they were in charge of the craft that hit the bridge and the Alabama Emergency Response Network was a stakeholder as it was responsible for responding to the accident.

What are the interests of the stakeholders? The stakeholders involved in this case had both monetary and social responsibility interests. Neither Amtrak nor CSX had wanted to oversee installment of bridge damage sensors because of the cost of installation. WGN's interest was to have capable and trained pilots guiding its ships to safety. The NTSB had an interest in preventing just this type of catastrophe. The U.S. Coast Guard had an interest in understanding the waterways and navigability of them. The Alabama Emergency Response Network had an interest in responding adequately to emergencies of this sort.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Amtrak's corporate social responsibility to the various stakeholders in this case before the incident was to ensure the safety of its travelers. The bridge, therefore, should have been outfitted with "sensors to detect bridge damage" per recommendation of the National Transportation Safety Board, but Big Bayou Canot Bridge was not (Eisenbeis, Hanks, Barrett, 1999). Amtrak's CSR should have seen to it that any bridge that it navigated was outfitted with these sensors or else refused to use such bridges. A tragedy could have been avoided had it done so.

Likewise, CSX which owned the track on the Big Bayou Canot Bridge where the disaster occurred should have seen to it that the bridge was outfitted with the proper sensors as part of its own CSR.

Additionally Amtrak's signal sensors should have been designed to detect shifts in rail lines and not just breaks. On the Bridge the rail had not broken but only shifted which caused the derailment. Signals gave the all-clear because they were not set up to detect shifts.

In short, all of the interested parties held some degree of CSR for one another because they are each interacting and dependent upon one another. The safety issues were not just one-sided or affecting only one party; their interconnected nature makes them each part of a greater web of responsibility and if one party fails to act responsibly, all of the others pay for it.

Amtrak's corporate social responsibility to the various stakeholders in this case after the incident is to pay reparations to those families who lost loved ones and to those who suffered injuries as a result. While this was a normal accident in the sense that human error was not to blame, it is an accident that could possibly have been prevented had the various agencies, including Amtrak, seen to it that all bridges were outfitted with the appropriate sensors. This was an accident waiting to happen.

Conclusion and Recommendation