Table of Contents Introduction: 3 Management Models: 4 2.How it was able to go bad so fast, a matter of Organisaitonal Behaviour: TALK ABOUT DEMOCRACY.. 5 2.1 Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics: 6 2.2 Unwanted effects of bad Organisational Behaviour: 7 2.2.
3 Managing Diversity and Understanding Varying Culture (Exhibit A – Singapore) 7 The Cost of having ‘bad’ Oragnisational Behaviour’ 8 Dara Khosrowshahi: 9 Introduction: Theterm Uber comes from the German definition for “denoting an outstanding orsupreme example of a particular kind of person or thing” as described by theOxford dictionary, this in a way represents the technology company’s persona indisplayed via its conduct internationally in previous years. An organisationknown for its extremely aggressiveexpansions by revolutionising an outdated point-to-point transport system whichhas not only faced backlash but legal obstacles and questionable operationalconduct as well. The paper explores the reason behind how Uber’s success from amanagerial and leadership perspective but also how this has unfortunately leadto the organisations current state of deterioration. Exploring the concept ofhow former CEO Travis Kalanick’s own personality has influenced the companyinternationally through the theory of ‘trickle-down’ leadership and explaininghow this explain the ethical behaviours and consequences of its notableprogression. Incorporating various models of management and leadership weexamine the pros and cons that Kalanick’s former company has done over the past few yearslikewise looking at current CEO Dara Khosrashowhi’s desire of the company andhis plans for improvement.
Management Models: 2.How it was able to go bad so fast, a matter ofOrganisaitonal Behaviour: TALK ABOUT DEMOCRACY Theold saying that ‘leaders are born’ has been heavily debunked by sociologistthroughout recent decades since a person’s personality and attitudes is partlyshaped by heritance but also heavily moulded by experience influenced by thosearound us. The probability that your friend will be happier goes up by 25% whenyou are happy with similar findings for losing and gaining weight as well asquitting smoking (Folwer & Christakis, YEAR).Chances of splitting with a spouse goesup by 75% if a close friend attains a divorce and 33% if a friend of a friendattains a divorce (McDermott). This concept of where one’s atmosphere isinfluenced by behavioural osmosis is known as ‘social cognition’ which providesa ‘mechanistic, process-oriented explanation of complex socialphenomena'(Winkielman & Schooler YEAR)which has allowed Kalanick’s personality as catalysed by the companiesexponential growth to ‘trickle-down’ the chain so fast.
This shows howimportant it is from an organisation to have both good leadership andmanagement. One way in which the investors andshareholders have done their part in running the company which Khosrowshahidescribed as a culture and governance that went wrong and the board went in avery bad direction. His solution to the matter is to increase the number ofpeople holding shares of the company taking a more parliamentary approach tomanagement. When focusing too much on improving firm status from a traditionalbusiness perspective of maximisation of utility, neglect for certain concernsis seen. The board’s and Kalanick’s desireto simply expand the company with an ‘at all cost mentality’ is the result ofthe company’s prestige influencing stakeholder evaluations (Kim & King, 2014)and investors reacting less negatively in response to greater earnings and highstatus (Sharkley, 2014).
This is about what is known as the ‘halo effect’ alsoknown as the ‘Mathew effect’ (Merton, 1968) which takes reference to a verse inthe bible which explains the influence of one’s position on a bell curve, therich or those above the mean will get richer and progress further to the fromand vice versa. This is show in reflection if a firm’s status being its”relative social standing” (Sorenson, 2014: 63) which denotes a position in ahierarchy (Podolny, 2001; Graffin et al. 2013) and reputation being the publicperson of a firm’s unique and distinguishable attributes (Fombrum , 1990; King & Whetton, 2008) including performance (Sorenson, 2014)or comparative discrepancies (Deephouse & Carter, 2005). The implication offirm status and reputation influences its perception by stakeholders whetherbeing internal stakeholder and managers or external representing service usersand judiciaries. 2.
1 Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics: Whilstorganisations may have begun to sacrifice their profits for social interests(Elhauge, 2005) post World War 2 where firms were not only in favour of helpingservicemen and women integrate back into society, but also to aid a worldrecovering from great tragedies. It has been ‘capitalised’ as a sub-passiveindirect form of investing into public relations with a return in higher salesseen in status and reputation favouring the company. Playing with underlyingpsychological mechanisms of behavioural expectations (Kim and King, 2014), theresearch has shown that is important for an entity to strive in both reputationand status and is unfavourable when a company has a positive reputation in oneaspect such as Uber’s quality of serviceand transparency but also of having bad reputation in another domain (Rheeand Haunschild, 2013) such as their conduct and lack of respect for competitorsor treatment of employees.
This has played in the hands of competitors such asLyft which currently holds approximately a quarter of the market share comparedto Uber’s dominating 90%+ market share at the end of the 2013 financial year.Its conduct is what is driving customers to not only other alternative servicesbut also negatively effect the organisation in the outcome of legal battles. Understanding this and given Uber’scurrent reputation for treatment of its internal and external environmentcombined with a neglect for CSR and ethics as shown by their neglect in the pastto participate in such activities, doing so would tremendously help theorganisation.
2.2 Unwanted effects of bad OrganisationalBehaviour:Whilst legal systems in mostdeveloped nations are designed to be of justice and equity, human behaviour isstill biased. The concept of the ‘halo effect; as proposed above incircumstances where a jury finds a firm subjectable and blameworthy formisconduct this flips over and becomes a ‘halo tax’ where as the result ofwhere an evaluator’s trust in an firm’s reputation and status is seen as’betrayal’ and the effects are more negative than what would be if not for thedistrust. It is typical for more prestige and elite corporations to bath intheir influence within a legal domain (Heinz and Laummann, 1982; Shaffer, 2009)with their positions distorting the enforcement of laws when applied tocorporate misconduct (Sutherland, 1949).
This is seen in the case of Uber’ssuits within London where the company’s lack of participation in CSR practiceshas played a huge part of their ban on the basis of it being not ‘fit andproper’ in accordance to the values held in that geographic. 2.2.3 Managing Diversity and Understanding VaryingCulture (Exhibit A – Singapore) Central Intelligence Agency Statistics (2017) Population (N) Land Mass (Km^2) N / Km^2 Singapore 5,888,926 709 8305.96 New zealand 4,510,327 268,838 16.78 Finland 5,518,371 303,815 18.16 Denmark 5,605,948 42,434 132.11 Australia 23,232,413 7,682,300 3.
02 United Kingdom 65,769,452 241,930 271.85 United States 326,625,791 9,147,593 35.71 Understandingthe internal and external environment of an organisation is an essentialcomponent of operational integrity ensuring that operational integrity is heldto a high standard which is especially necessary for an internationalorganisation such as Uber. When comparing the statistics of Singapore relativeto that of countries with similar population and those that the potentialaudience of this paper would be familiar with, see that the population (N) per squarekilometre is completely different and about 30 times the size of the secondhigher (N / Km^2). This poses many underlying challenges that could be faced,for starters understanding that with such density of population the standingand previous governments would have measures in place to ease both levels ofcongestion and pollution which is currently done in the form of high taxationsand tariffs for vehicular importers as highly expensive costs for registrationsto lower the supply of vehicles in the country.
To deny this would be foolish asUber’s decisions to rent thousands of vehicles in Singapore not onlydemonstrates that they were aware of the vehicular situation of this currentmarket which would allow them to ‘penetrate’ the Asian sector but also showshow their basic model of simply connecting drivers and riders is a liability.One main criticism made by the taxi industry is that Uber drivers typically arenot subjected to the same level of background checking and driving experiencetests and has resulted in Uber drivers being responsible for a multitude offatalities in Singapore. The Cost of having ‘bad’ Organisational Behaviour’Studies havefound that firm’s benefit tremendously from having good status and reputationespecially when the two are aligned (Stern, Dukerich and Zajac, 2014), inreference to Uber’s conduct, continuous cases of sexual harassment anddiscrimination suits, disrespect for their competitors in the market and lackof participation in CSR has led to a variety of consequences includingincreased markets-share of their main competitor ‘Lyft’ and being stripped oftheir license to operate out of London. 3.
0 Recommendations: Oneof the main problems of Uber is despite their high-quality service, theirstatus is declining, and reputation is slowly being regained. The managerialside of Uber is not much to be changed but the leadership is and method ofgovernance. Eventuality of regaining publicperception as a result of Khosrowshahi mission to improve Ubers culture and theexecution of proposals made in the paper, a positive reputation as seen by thepublic will be regained given that Uber has recently expanded its brand to allowfor Uber-Eats and Uber-Pool, public perception in the masses is still good and thereis not much precedence for Uber to concern about as typically expected from companiesas people in general are largely circumspect towards revised pre-existing beliefs(Traut-Mattaush et al., 2014) Situational awareness is critical forany firm’s adaptation in a new market, it should adhere to the cultures and normsof that particular region, simply operating in a conventional sense with a levelof neglect opens to a sense of vulnerability and mis-conduct. This has been a greatchallenge for the firm given their level of expansion internationally with the numberof administrative officers required to maintain and ensure smooth operations hasobviously been very costly for the company, but more needs to be done to understandthe different niches of markets. This is more so important on a regional sense ratherthan that of a country-by-country basis, Dara Khosrowshahi: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/live-uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-talks-tech-at-davos.html