Question

Conduct an ethical culture analysis on the Uber establishment/corporation. Please make sure you answer/address the following sections/points based on the Uber corporation.

Provide information on when the unethical behavior has occurred.

1a. Ethical Decision Making and Ethical Influence

• Where did the ethical decision making break down?
• Where did ethical influence take place?

1b. Ethical Conflict Management

• Where did ethical conflict management take place?
• How did they handle the ethical issue and was it successfully resolved?

(Please do this for every ethical situation and detail how this occurred. You will likely have at least a page or two for this section. A table would be appropriate here)

1c. Ethical Organization and Performance

• Where did the ethical organization take place or fail to take place? How could we improve ethical group performance?

(Note- I would utilize the implementation guidelines heavily on how to make the organization better in the next section)

1d. Ethical Areas

• What areas in the organization were impacted?
• Where their other areas impacted?

1e. Ethical Performance

• How can we improve organizational performance?
  • (1-2 paragraphs)

Answer 1

Ethical issues

Passenger Safety:

According to New York Times, many UBER drivers have been convicted with sexual harassment and sexually assaulting of the passengers. One of the reasons for this is improper background checks of the UBER drivers. Also, there are no proper set criteria for the requirements to become a driver and for the vehicle to be used by drivers. Many cases have been filled against UBER drivers involving in unethical practices such as sexual harassment, rapes and sexual assaults and so on with the passengers. Other cases against drunk drivers driving UBER and misbehaving with passengers have also been registered in recent times. Some of the recent incidents are as following:

1. A passenger in Chicago accused an UBER driver of sexually assaulting her.
2. In Jan 2016, another case was filed in Chicago where an UBER driver was arrested for being suspect of kidnapping a drunken passenger and then taking her to a hotel for sexual assault.
3. In London, a case had been registered against a UBER driver who sexually harassed a woman and ask her to perform oral sex.

Security of Drivers:

Recently many cases have been filed against the security of UBER’s drivers from passengers which include beating up of drivers, misbehaving with drivers and assaults of drivers etc. UBER is not taking proper actions for the security of its drivers. Many times, an UBER driver’s vehicle has been damaged by passengers but no proper responsibility has been taken by UBER for the protection of drivers. Some of the recent incidents relating to this are:

• On Nov 3, 2015, a drunken passenger in California assaults UBER driver over the weekend. Although the passenger lost his job as corporate manager at Taco Bell after the video was publicly released, UBER did not take any action to stop this kind of incident.
• Another recent incident happened on Jan 1, 2016 in Miami, when a Doctor in Florida aggressively attacked UBER driver. Some recorded the video of the incident and video got viral. Doctor was placed on administrative leave from hospital but nothing has been done from UBER’s side.

Privacy

Recently, UBER has been accused of keeping track of their customers with the help of smart phone app. The tracking system which the company is using to keep a track on its customers is called as ‘God View’, with which they can access the customer’s contacts and send an advertisement about their services. One can argue that the people are monitored by police departments too. But there is a moral difference. Police departments keep on track in order to maintain peace in the society whereas UBER is trying to expand its market range or business interests.

In June 2015, EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center), a non-profit organization headquartered at Washington D.C filed an official complaint on UBER about its misuse of customer’s privacy terms.[2]

Recruitment and Unethical Conduct of Employees:

UBER is accused of following unethical recruitment and unethical behavior of its employees. UBER has hired some employees as brand ambassadors and provided them with credit cards in order to create a duplicate account with its competitors and to lure their drivers. This program is termed as SLOG (Supplying Long-term Operations Growth) by UBER.[3]

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UBER has also been accused of unethical behavior of its employees. In UBER, employees are encouraged to book the competitor services and cancel the order once they get the confirmation for the ride. The main competitor Lyft which is identifiable with pink mustaches has released information that the UBER employees have booked and cancelled approximately 5000 rides in time range of few months. Here the competitor has to face double losses of less number of customers and unnecessary expenses on going to the pick-up, place only to turn back with no customer. Here the question of unethical behavior as well as violation of fair competition laws arises.[4]

Unethical leadership at UBER:

First, CEO of UBER, Travis Kalanick admits to trying to torpedo funding efforts of his biggest rival, Lyft. He was also quoted admitting that his company tried to talk investors out of raising money for Lyft. Second, CEO Kalanick has also referred to his company as “Boob-er” by which he meant that running UBER has helped him meet girls.

Bloomberg was quoted by talking about the CEO as “He can behave, gleefully, like a feral frat boy dreamed up by Ayn Rand; his mission statement runs to some variation of “you know, push a button and get around San Francisco like ballers.”[5] Finally I would like to conclude by saying that if ethics start at the top, then tone at the top certainly matters a great deal. Kalanick clearly needs some help with what it means to be an ethical leader, setting an example for his growing empire.

UBER Poaching Competitor’s Drivers:

“Independent contractors for UBER apparently use burner phones tied to dummy accounts, with instructions to vary the locations from which they order car rides from their main competitor, Lyft. Once in the car, the contractors apparently try to figure out whether drivers can be persuaded to switch loyalties to UBER, and in some markets can apparently offer them a sign-up kit on the spot. The latest documents shed new light on practices that Lyft has been complaining about it for some time, including in a CNN Money report this month in which the company claimed that 177 UBER workers had ordered and canceled more than 5,000 rides. That and other reports have framed those canceled rides as a form of sabotage. If someone orders a ride and then cancels it, it costs the driver the time, money and aggravation of going to the pick-up location to meet a rider who isn’t there.”

Unethical conduct of employees

For UBER to sustain for longer term and to be in the competition they should think of practicing and implementing new strategies to increase the business not by making fake accounts and to order fake rides from other competitors to decrease their business to make their own business more profitable. Such steps could be very harmful for long term business of a company as these cases will increase the business risk in terms of customer’s royalty.   

UBER should stop using techniques that may earnmoney in short run but destroy the ethical leaf from tree of uber

Ethical influence is about gaining their acceptance and choosing to do it rather than forcing people to do things. And, of course, the most effective influence is getting people to really 'want' to do it ― that is the ultimate goal of the ethical influencer.

managers of programs like SLOG should come forward and criticize these practices.

Cannot Answer more than one question (policy)