22 Nov 2022

37

Change Management Process at Uber

Format: APA

Academic level: University

Paper type: Term Paper

Words: 2068

Pages: 7

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For any company, the growth and development are highly related to change implementation in its management system. The implementation of change depends on several factors that may be factors within the company or external factors and conditions. The internal factors include the company's preference of objectives, features of the management system and its values that make the company distinct from other organizations in its environment (Gortz et al., 2017) . Growth and development of any organization is the manifestation of a consistent and logical implementation of several positive changes that result from an adopted managerial adaptation that represents the basic distinct characteristic features of the company. The management system should have been focused on its objectives and values and have a clear description of the conditions it should meet. In a company’s growth and development, simultaneous observance of a number of orientations is required especially the pro market, pro quality; strategic, knowledge and change focus (Giles et al., 2015) . This paper seeks to identify organizational problems that need a change initiative. It also seeks to identify and find solutions to the forces that block the implementation of the program change. 

The Uber technologies company is a taxi cab food delivery and transportation Network Company with its headquarter in San Francisco, California. It operates in 633 cities globally with platform accessed in mobile apps and its websites. The reason for selecting this organization is because Uber has been extremely prominent in the sharing economy and as a result, has led to changes in very many industries now referred to urbanization (Giles et al., 2015) . The word ‘Uber’ was coined from a German word meaning above. The Uber Company offers a wide variety of service types and levels depending on the region it operates; for example, Uber motor available in India provides transportation in motorcycle, Uber boat in Istanbul which offers a water taxi service among others (Gortz et al., 2017) . In addition, Uber partnered with the blade in July 2014 to offer helicopter rides from New York to the Hamptons in their product branded Uber chopper. The Uber Company was founded in 2009 by Garret Camp and Travis Kalanick. It was initially named Uber cab, and the name was changed to Uber 2011. 

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The Uber application is available for free download in android devices and androids. A client who wants to ride with Uber has to download the app, and request a ride. An approximate figure of the fare they will pay is quoted before requesting the ride. The company uses a price model that changes from time to time based on the projected time of day, supply and demand and distance (Posen, 2015) . At the end of the ride, payment is made based on the preferred payment method by the client. The Uber Company has faced several challenges such as sexism and sexual harassment in the company. It has also faced several lawsuits with the most recent one being field by alphabet, Google parent company for alleged theft of intellectual property related to self-driving car technology (Posen, 2015) . The most prominent challenge is to do with sexual harassment of the client by the company drivers. It is for this reasons that the company needs to change some of its days to day activities and culture. 

The company needs to change the significant policies within it to strengthen employee responsibility and employer responsibility. Various obstacles would impede changes within the organization, and they include the lack of executive support and active sponsorship of policies. Effective sponsorship can mobilize and activate the organizations while poor sponsorship inhibits and delays progress. Lack of executive support is by far the most significant obstacle reported by most employees in the change management and development of policy (Posen, 2015) . Secondly, low change management buy-in and resourcing can also be an obstacle to change management. This is the lack of investment and allocation of resources for change management mostly due to a lack of understanding on why the actual change is being sorted. To have the most successful adopted changes and use, the benefits of the change have to be realized, and the cost of not having the change should be avoided. The company needs to allocate resources according to the scope and scale of the change. 

Resistance at all levels of management is also an obstacle as well as lack of support for a specific solution that has been developed. Resistance present at all level of the organization most specifically with the levels where the change directly impacts the individuals of the organization (Spott, 2018) . The culture and organizational structure of the company could be change resistant. Internal politics, development of personal agendas and outride poor behavior help shape a change-resistant culture. Therefore, in this case, success for change depends on individual transition as well as the environment at which the change is done. A holistic look at the organization is essential and hard honest questions should be asked as to whether the environment is friendly or opposes the change. Lack of prioritization is also an obstacle to the much-needed change in an organization. In any organization, with many strategic projects and intensive change initiatives, will without doubt fatigue their employees with a saturation of change, therefore, change saturation is also an obstacle. Many change projects bring down the ability of organizational leaders and managers to prioritize a change. 

To confirm the issue of sexual harassment in the company various kinds of data would be used to confirm that diagnosis (Giles et al., 2015) . Structured interviews with drivers and clients would be a mainstay for data collection. Interviews should be translated into vernacular languages for participants who do not understand English. The organization of the interview schedule should include biodata, sexual harassment experience questionnaire, and a detailed description of the harasser and response from the company after reporting the incident (Widner, 2018) . Within the biodata, it should include whether the participant was the driver or the client, the gender and area where the incident happened (Norman, 2017) . The sexual harassment questionnaire should contain responses that entail if the participant experienced sexual harassment while receiving services from the company or in the case of the driver if he was working at the company. How many times the participant has experienced it, details of how it happened and the response by the company after they report it. This analysis should be applied at the organizational level to come up with policies that prevent sexual harassment in the organization (Gortz et al., 2017)

First, the company should drop the mandatory arbitration requirements and non-disclosure agreement for sexual assault and harassment victims. Second, there needs to be a partnership between the company and organizations that prevent and drive awareness on sexual assault and domestic violence (Coopersmith, 2017) . Apart from that, Uber should add to its features a panic button or panic alarm that directly calls or informs emergency services of impending sexual assault. The recruitment of Uber drivers should also be more thorough. They should also create a connection such that when a spouse or client requests a ride; their next of kin gets a notification and can trace the entire trip in real time with the name, type of car and address of the driver. 

Mandatory arbitration is a contract clause that prevents conflicts from going to a judicial court. Sexual harassment victims are made to sign the contract because, for the company, arbitration is less expensive and there are fewer conflicts as compared to going to court (Widner, 2018) . By scraping the mandatory arbitration clauses, the company gives victims and sexual harassment their choice of venue to seek legal redress (Giles et al., 2015) . This also increases the reporting rate of crimes that involve sexual assault enabling the population and organizations that seek justice and help prevent sexual assault plan and develop new ideas to counter the vice (Elliot, 2015). By partnering with organizations that create awareness and seek to prevent sexual harassment, more victims are helped and encouraged to speak up (Spott, 2018) . It is the company’s responsibility to provide a safe way for victims to report incidents of abuse or sexual harassment, especially if speaking up may damage their carriers or lose their jobs (Norman, 2017) . As a policy, the company together with partnering organizations should create whistleblower lines for reporting of harassment, have departments that receive the complains and take them seriously. 

The key for the company to create effective reporting systems is collaborations with government security bodies and organizations that the public has faith in (Coopersmith, 2017) . Moreover, the company together with the partnering organization should create a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment. This can be achieved by making sure that the silence of victims is not bought and is not an option. The company also has to team up with organizations that offer emergency services to introduce safety features such as alarms and panic buttons for the drivers as well as the clients (Elliot, 2015). It should be in such a way that once the client or driver presses on the panic button, the emergency service provider partnering with the company is informed, can locate the vehicle, the driver and the passengers and offers immediate assistance. Through the same system, the client can also call the police or an ambulance for help. A clear policy should be set for the recruitment of the company drivers. Any proper recruitment process must have a recruitment team. 

In recruiting Uber drivers, the recruitment teams have the most vital roles since a wrong decision will implicate the whole company (Huang, 2015) . The recruitment process and clear job description should be laid out and ample time for application for an interested candidate should be given. Qualified candidates from the application are called for the interviews and job offers given. It should be a policy for the company that all drivers have a review of their personal, commercial, criminal employment and financial records to have a clear picture and the kind of employee one are having (Coopersmith, 2017) . A thorough criminal and employment records should be done in particular with the aim of singling out employees who may have the potential to commit sexual harassment-assault. 

To effectively change the above recommendation further solutions that will cement the recommendation will be vital in the building of trust, transformation, and accountability. The board of oversight at the company should be enhanced. This should be done by enhancing the independence of the board (Huang, 2015) . It should be restructured to include additional independence board sits with members who have a meaningful experience on other boards and can exercise non-bias oversight of Uber's management. The board should also install an independent chairperson to enhance the level of the board oversight. The independence chairperson sits addresses the need to serve as an independence check on Uber’s management and the need to demonstrate to the company’s employees customers and partners that the board is taking investigations and governance seriously (Spott, 2018) . In the board, an oversight committee should be created for example an anti-sexual harassment and ethics committee. The committee could be organized as a standing committee of the board with its purpose being to oversee Uber's effort to prevent and reduce sexual harassment claims as well as enhance ethical business practices and inclusion within the company. The activities of the committee could comprise meeting with senior management officers responsible for client and driver safety as well as ethics (Coopersmith, 2017)

The committee could monitor compliance with Uber’s values concerning harassment and promote awareness on the same as well as an ethical and inclusive environment. Moreover, the oversight board should consider incorporating other ethical practices as well as formulating an Uber form of conduct. They should hold senior leaders accountable and develop compensation packages for victims who may not want to follow the judicial system. Finally, as far as the board oversight committee is a concern, they should nominate a senior executive team member whose work will mainly be to make sure that all recommendations are adhered to by all levels of the organization. In the choosing of this member, the board should be careful to appoint someone who is viewed positively by all employees (Giles et al., 2015) . The individual should be given full authority and enough resources to implement the recommendations and should report directly to the board on the progress towards implementation. The company should follow up on the progress as far as sexual harassment is concerned, record any decline or rise in cases a review of the recommendation appropriately. The use of performance reviews should be used to hold senior leaders accountable for the changes seen in the company (Elliot, 2015). A metric should be established within the company to which all the leaders in charge will be held accountable in the performance review process. For example, the parameters would include responsiveness to client complaint, the employee complains, employees satisfaction and general compliance with the companies code of conduct. 

References 

Coopersmith, J. (2017). The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World. By Brad Stone. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2017. 372 pp. Photographs, notes, index. Cloth, $30.00. ISBN: 978-0-316-38839-9.  Business History Review 91 (3), 606-608. 

Elliott, R. E. (2015). Sharing App or Regulation Hackney: Defining Uber Technologies, Inc. J. Corp. L ., 41, 727. 

Giles, D., Stommel, W., Paulus, T., Lester, J., & Reed, D. (2015). Microanalysis of online data: The methodological development of “digital CA”.  Discourse, Context & Media 7 , 45-51. 

Gortz, M., do Nascimento, D. E., Merkle, L. E., Amaral, M. A., & Almeida, L. D. A. (2017, July). Is Uber “Wild”? A Study of a Car Sharing Product-Service System (PSS) Under the Perspective of Cognition in the Wild. In  International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics  (pp. 392-404). Springer, Cham. 

Huang, R. T. (2015). Overcoming invisible obstacles in organizational learning: the moderating effect of employee resistance to change.  Journal of Organizational Change Management 28 (3), 356-368. 

Norman, D. (2017). Design, business models, and human-technology teamwork: As automation and artificial intelligence technologies develop, we need to think less about human-machine interfaces and more about human-machine teamwork.  Research-Technology Management 60 (1), 26-30. 

Posen, H. A. (2015). Ridesharing in the sharing economy: Should regulators impose Uber regulations on Uber.  Iowa L. Rev. 101 , 405. 

Spott, P. (2018).  UBER: A Case Study in Strategy, Leadership and Change  (Doctoral dissertation, The College of St. Scholastica). 

Widmer, L. (2018). Combating Sexual Harassment in the Workplace.  Risk Management 65 (1), 30-35. 

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