The Organization and the Issue
Uber Technologies Inc. is a multinational organization, whose main headquarters are situated in California. The company was established in March 2009, by Garret Camp and Travis Kalanick. The founders envisioned an organization that would provide cost-effective on-demand car services to individuals globally. The company has experienced rapid expansion over the years, and its line of specialty has been diversified to include food delivery, and GPS services, among others. Today, Uber serves clients in over eighty-one countries worldwide. Furthermore, the company is characterized by a high hierarchical company structure, where the chief executive officer in the company has unlimited power and influence in the organization.
The primary challenge that inhibits the company’s productivity and efficiency is its lack of effective leadership. Ineffective leadership has outcome numerous problems such as bullying, sexual harassment and a vast number of discriminatory practices in the workplace. Additionally, the company is also characterized by a constant communication breakdown and the deficiency of autonomy in decision making. Ineffective communication inhibits effective decision making, deterring the company from being highly productive and efficient, which has negatively impacted the growth of the organization
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Analysis of Current Corporate Culture
Corporate culture entails the shared morals, outlooks, beliefs, and behaviors which determine the manner in which the staff and the management interact, as well how visible the norms of a company are, and how they are shared by all the staff. Uber is depicted as a company with an undesired or negative corporate culture ( Ofstad, 2017 ). The company’s mission is to provide reliable transportation for all its customers, globally. In addition, the company’s core visions are to inspire trust in its clients by solving their problems and what is right. The company also aims to promote and embrace diversity, as well as to maximize staff earnings, and lessen transportation costs.
Nonetheless, the company has been unable to uphold and achieve their mission and vision, due to the unethical leaders and practices of the organization. The company breeds a culture that encourages predatory, overly-aggressive, and immoral actions ( Sprague, 2015 ). The human resource department promotes sexual harassment by overlooking such actions, with the little justification that the accused offenders have strong histories of performing well, among other explanations. When an allegation is made, the only thing the HR department does is to warn the accused. The ineffective human resource is one of the primary problems that plagues Uber Technologies Inc. The company’s ineffective and unethical leaders choose to turn a blind eye to sexual harassment, and other immoral acts, instead of documenting and conducting thorough investigations, to make the most effective decision.
Additionally, even though the company’s vision is to embrace and promote diversity, its actions have been contrary to this vision. Fowler, one of the victims of sexual harassment in the company, states that the number of female staff in Uber declined from twenty-five percent to three percent in a single year ( Jordan, 2017 ). The decline is attributed to the prevalence of sexual harassment which is done by managers, who threaten to fire female employees in case they attempt to report these actions to the HR department. The female workers in the company are subjected to sexual abuse by male managers since the company culture fails to respect, promote, and embrace diversity. This corporate culture can be attributed to the vast number of rogue individual in the management team, who have encouraged this practice ( Jordan, 2017 ). The company is deficient of effective role models who can reinforce and maintain a positive corporate culture, as well as leaders in which the employees can look up to.
Areas of Weakness
Uber Technologies Inc. has some areas which are flawed. For instance, when it comes to diversity, the company fails to encourage and promote this aspect, by failing to give respect and show concern for the female workers in the company, who are subjected to sexual abuse. Additionally, teamwork is not employed in the company due to the great disparities between the management and subordinate staff. The managers take advantage of their positions in the company, to exploit and harass the subordinate teams, who have no power to seek justice since their jobs are threatened by such attempts. As a result, the company has failed to perform excellently. According to Jordan (2017 ), one of the significant weaknesses facing the company is that it fails to use proper motivational strategies to boost its employees working morale, performance, and productivity. The staffs are forced to work in an intimidating and hostile environment where their needs are not prioritized, reducing their job satisfaction levels, as well as the quality of their performance in the firm, which has been detrimental to the company’s success.
Solutions
It is crucial for some drastic actions to be taken at Uber Technologies Inc. if the business is to succeed. First, extensive investigations should be carried out, to provide proof of the sexual harassment allegations made by female staffs, against managers in the organization.
The company should then take legal action against the accused, to ensure that the rest of the staffs are aware of the grave consequences that would occasion such actions. Additionally, the current management team should be replaced by a new one, to eradicate unethical and ineffective leaders in the company ( Sprague, 2015 ). The new leaders should also undergo extensive training on effective leadership to ensure that they make positive transformations to the company’s culture.
Furthermore, strict policies and codes of conduct should be implemented and observed, to ensure that ethical behavior is maintained in the firm. In addition, leaders should employ more effective motivational strategies such as the creation of a more secure and ethical working climate, and employee engagement, to heighten the staffs levels of satisfaction and motivational levels. Moreover, new female leaders should be selected to ensure that the concerns of female workers are represented by one of their own, to the company’s management ( Ofstad, 2017). This would lessen the gap between the female and the male employees in the company, fostering professional interaction, and most importantly, teamwork, which would increase productivity. Furthermore, the management should maintain good relationships with the employees through effective communication and the prioritization of the needs of the staff over their own. Consequently, issues would be identified quickly and resolved, before matters blow out of proportion. Most importantly, transformational leadership should be employed to impact a positive transformation in the company’s culture.
References
Jordan, J. M. (2017). Challenges to the large-scale digital organization: the case of Uber. Journal of Organization Design , 6 (1), 11.
Ofstad, M. (2017). The Rise of Ridesharing Platforms: an Uber-assessment of Bits and atoms (Master's thesis).
Sprague, R. (2015). Worker (Mis) Classification in the Sharing Economy: Square Pegs Trying to Fit in Round Holes. ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law , 31 .
