Ethics and Amtrak
The Amtrak case study is a horrible accident that occurred in 1993. I feel the entire cause of the accident was a series of events that could not have been known. The stakeholders in this care are the Amtrak employees, customers and land owners of the railway lines. The biggest interest of the stakeholders would be loss of life. No one wants to be involved with the loss of a human life. And I am sure there are several financial reasons for the interest, as well.
To begin with, corporate social responsibility functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business would monitor and ensure its support to law, ethical standards, and international norms. The legal obligation Amtrak has is to provide a safe service for its customers. They need to show the customers that they put every effort into providing a safe and dependable service. Economically Amtrak needs to clear up this disaster and correct the problems so the customers will continue to use Amtrak.
If this situation is not handled correctly it could have ruined the company. Ethically Amtrak needs to seriously improve it tracking and emergency response procedures. When they couldn’t really determine where the train, in my opinion, was the biggest problem with the EMS reaching the crash. Philanthropic is showing concern for humanity, especially by performing charitable actions such as donating money. I feel if Amtrak agreed to pay for the services of the people who died in the accident, that would be a good start.
Finally, my recommendation for this case is simple. Figure out what went wrong and what went right. Correct all the wrongs and make sure the corrections stay in place. They also need to determine some type of checks and balances for these new procedures. I understand accidents happen, but, Amtrak needs to take every precaution to ensure this does not happen again. I feel if the current managers and supervisors had a stronger sense of morals this accident would have been much easier to deal with.
In fact, this accident might not have happened if the current administration had enforced stricter rules. I also feel that a situation like this can destroy a transportation company if it’s not handled properly. The company needs to get the customers confidence back at any cost, because no customers no revenue. I feel Amtrak has a long way to go to repair the faults in their company, however at least admitting they need help or have problems is the first step in correcting the issues.
