Ethical Theories and Business Operations

The assignment explores the application of utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and Kant's theory to the business operations of companies like Uber and Deliveroo. It discusses scandals such as sexual harassment and efforts to suppress evidence, and examines how these actions are considered unethical by applying the three ethical theories.

Running Head: ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
Ethics and Governance
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note

1ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
Introduction
Common-based peer production can be described as a socio-economic system of
production that is appearing under the environment that is networked digitally. The hallmark of
the socio-economic system enabled by the technical uses of internet can be seen as an alliance
among the large corporations that are at times range from the order of hundreds to thousands;
who work together effectively to share knowledge, information and cultural goods without
depending on the managerial hierarchy or on the market pricing in order to coordinate their
shared enterprise. It is seen that there are presence of various reasons to understand the unique
production system that that has made some effective software, unique technologies for the
betterment of the system (Levitt 2017). The purpose of this essay is to shed light on the ethical
dimension rather than focusing on the functional dimension. It is seen that Deliverwoo and Uber
are two such platform based peer production system and in recent times the platform economies
are growing significantly.
Discussion
Deliveroo is a business organization that has been seen to get accusations regarding
unethical actions and the management of the business organization stated that the delivery boys
of the institution should be seen as independent workers as they should be treated as self-
employed individuals as they get paid in a commission basis. The business model of Deliveroo is
a platform based peer production that is similar to the business operation of Uber. The
management of Deliveroo and Uber pays thousands of people on a commission basis for
Delivering products or driving for the clients and thus they tried to avoid the allegations. It is a
matter of fact that the provided guidance to the organization Deliveroo made their own employes

2ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
getting confused regarding the roles and responsibility of the riders who are responsible to
deliver the goods to the clients of the company. These guidelines were given to the organization
in order to check and satisfy the dos and the don’ts of the business organization.
. These are clearly unethical actions taken by the management to save the brand-value of
the company and as a result of these, the image of the company got lowered and the reputation of
the organization got ruined (Levitt 2017). The business organization had also got accusations
regarding poor working environment and hostile actions of the male employees on the female
employees. Facing this immensely significant challenge the HR department did not take a proper
action. However when the news became public, the management of the organization arranged an
investigation and took actions against 20 employees who were accused of disrupting the working
ambience of the business organization (The Conversation, 2018). In a press meet the
management of Uber disclosed the identities of the employees who were terminated by the
management in order to cleanse the image of the brand. The management initially thought that
by improving the public relation they will be able to get away with the allegations they have
received in recent times (Constantiou, Marton and Tuunainen 2017). Apart from these there are
several accusations against the organization regarding the drivers’ behavioral issues towards the
clients of the organization. The management of Uber needs to be aware of the fact that the
management needs to spend a fortune to improve the situation and to improve the safety features
for both the clients and the drivers working under the organization to improve the situation. In
this case it is seen that there is a strong resemblance in the way of expansion of the businesses of
Amazon and Uber as they both earned their dominance in the market by rapid investing and
providing service at a significantly cheap rate than the other competitors of the market (Graham
and Woodcock 2018). It is a matter of fact that the business operations of Uber does not involve

3ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
the above mentioned costs and rather introduced some new establishment costs in the relatively
new market of the organization’s operation (The Conversation, 2018). It is seen that Uber’s rate
of development in the previous financial year was nearing 12 million US dollars that has been
raised from various types of investors be it individuals or the institutions lie banks.
It can be said that the payment structure for the riders should be in a form of the digital
invoice rather than the pay slips. This list that contains dos and the don’ts are already provided to
the employees of the organization and can certainly claim to initiate legal actions against the
organization of the distinction between the riders and the employees who are directly under the
payroll of the company is not cleared (Butler, 2018). The permanent employees in this case
certainly can demand more employment rights and various benefits that may include minimum
wage and holidays, sick leaves with full payment and many others. It has been seen that
approximately 20 riders filed complaints against the organizations that the organizations does not
consider them as the employees of the organizations and on the other hand the management of
the organization placed their view stating that those individuals were only commission based
self-employed people (Constantiou, Marton and Tuunainen 2017). It has been seen that at a time
almost 200 riders of Deliveroo protested to get the status of employees of the organization as it is
compulsory for them to wear uniforms during their shift and gets fixed rate for delivering the
products. These are the gray areas of unethical actions taken by the managements of
organizations like Uber and Deliveroo.
It is to be mentioned that the operations of the companies based on the platform based
peer production system like Uber and Deliveroo can be analyzed by the application of the
principles of several ethical theories. Ethical theories provide guidance about making ethically

4ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
correct decisions and also aim to analyze whether the operations of individuals or companies
alike are in line with ethical principles.
The theory of Utilitarianism states that while taking an ethical decision, it has to be kept in mind
that the consequences of such decision must produce the greatest benefit for the greatest number
of people (Lazari-Radek and Singer 2017). The theory of Utilitarianism also states that the
actions of individuals and organizations must ensure to maximize the god over the bad.
Utilitarianism considers the best decision to be the one which yields the greatest net benefit. It is
to be stated that while assessing the benefits the stake holders are to be taken into consideration.
To calculate the Utility the consequences of each of the individuals acts are to be taken into
consideration and the ultimately the summation of the consequences are to be considered
(Barrow 2015). In case of the company Uber the primary stake holders are the drivers and the
customers who are the most essential elements of their business.
However, Uber’s decision to ignore the needs of the drivers and providing safety to the
customers in order to avoid the costs to be incurred in the process can be considered unethical.
The business model of Uber only focuses on the growth of the company and emerging in new
markets however such business model does not have any scope for allocating funds to ensure
that the ethical standards of business is met as the company has been facing huge losses
(Lownsbrough 2018). Recently Uber has been charged with the claims of sexual harassments
from employees and customers alike which provide evidence that the company’s policy does not
comply with ethical standards. The company Deliveroo has also been posed with claims of
couriers. The company Deliveroo does not acknowledge the couriers who are instrumental to the
success of the company as employees of the company. The company Deliveroo has claimed the
couriers, who make deliveries and takeaways as independent contractors to avoid providing them

5ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
with employment benefits like holiday pay, leaves. Thus it can be stated that actions of the
company are not in line with the principles of Utilitarianism as the operations of the company
have failed to provide maximum benefits for the stakeholders (Mulgan 2014).
Another Ethical theory that can be applied to assess the operations of the companies is
the theory of virtue ethics. It is to be mentioned that the theory of virtue ethics is considered to be
the one of the three major approaches of normative ethics. It primarily focuses on the moral
character and virtues as opposed to other approaches that focus on duties, roles and
consequences of actions of individuals and organizations alike (Van Hooft 2014). Just like
consequentialists primarily attend to consequences and deontologists attend to duties proponents
of virtue ethics attend to virtues and moral values. According to this theory, it can be stated that
virtue can be considered to be a trait of a person’s character which is very well entrenched in the
possessor and cannot be acquired over time (Annas 2015). Thus by the application of the theory
of virtue ethics it can be stated that Uber’s action of not adhering to the needs of the drivers and
the safety of the passengers can be considered to be in violation of the principles of the theory of
virtue ethics.
The business model of Uber only focuses on the growth and development of the company
in new markets and ignores the need for complying with the social standards due to improper
allocation of resources and funds. The act of gender discrimination in the workplace and the
claims of sexual harassments of the customers provide evidence about the unethical practices in
the aforementioned companies. The act of not recognizing the couriers as the employees of the
company Deliveroo is also against the principles of the ethical theory of virtue ethics. It can be
stated according to this theory that the couriers are persons who make the food deliveries and are
the ones who are instrumental in the success of the company and not recognizing them as

6ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
employees for the purpose avoiding paying them employment benefits. This is against the
principles of virtue ethics. It is unethical to treat the couriers as individual contractors who have
to wear uniforms during the work shift, are paid a fixed wage rate. The movements of the
couriers are also tracked by the company and are subjected to performance review. Therefore it
can be said that the couriers of the company perform all the functions of employees but are
recognized as independent contractor.
Deontology theories are a series of ethical theories that primarily focus on the duties of
the individuals to evaluate actions as right or wrong (Letwin et al. 2016). The theories of
deontology do not consider the consequences of the actions of individuals as opposed to the
theories of consequencialism. It is to be mentioned that the moral status of an act is not to be
judged by the consequences of the act but rather the intentions of the agent who is performing
the act.
According to the theories of deontology it can be stated that morality of an individual
involves the respect for the rights of individuals by the performance of their corresponding duties
(Bowen and Prescott2015). The operations of Uber can be considered to be unethical judging by
the principles of the theories of deontology. Uber’s business plan cannot afford to allocate funds
for providing safety to customers and rights to the drivers. It is the duty of the company to
comply with the ethical standards however; the company’s business plan primarily focuses on
the growth of the company in new markets. The company Deliveroo also has the responsibility to
the couriers to acknowledge them as employees as the company benefits from them. However
Deliveroo addresses them as merely self employed contractors so as to avoid paying them the
minimum wage rate as prescribed by the government and other employment benefits.

7ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
Conclusion
Thus it can be said that It is seen that there are numerous issues that hails from the ways
of business operations of organizations like Deliveroo and Uber; and those issues are especially
regarding the actions of the organizations like whether those are ethical or not. The business
operation of Uber is backed up by the immense ambition of the management of the organization.
Recently it has been experienced various times that the organizations got involved in various
scandals that include sexual harassments and efforts to suppressing the evidences of such crimes.
These are clearly unethical actions taken by the management to save the brand-value of the
company and as a result of these, the image of the company got lowered and the reputation of the
organization got ruined. Further by the application of the three ethical theories it can be stated
that the operations of the businesses are clearly unethical.

8ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
Bibliography
Annas, J., 2015. Applying virtue to ethics. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 32(1), pp.1-14.
Barrow, R., 2015. Utilitarianism: A contemporary statement. Routledge.
Bowen, S.A. and Prescott, P., 2015. Kant’s contribution to the ethics of communication. Ethical
Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics, 12, pp.38-44.
Butler, S. (2018). Deliveroo accused of 'creating vocabulary' to avoid calling couriers employees.
[online] the Guardian. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/05/deliveroo-couriers-employees-managers
[Accessed 27 Feb. 2018].
Constantiou, I., Marton, A. and Tuunainen, V.K., 2017. Four Models of Sharing Economy
Platforms. MIS Quarterly Executive, 16(4).
de Lazari-Radek, K. and Singer, P., 2017. Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford
University Press.
Graham, M. and Woodcock, J., 2018. Towards a fairer platform economy: introducing the
Fairwork Foundation.
Letwin, C., Wo, D., Folger, R., Rice, D., Taylor, R., Richard, B. and Taylor, S., 2016. The
“right” and the “good” in ethical leadership: Implications for supervisors’ performance and
promotability evaluations. Journal of Business Ethics, 137(4), pp.743-755.
Levitt, T., 2017. The Company Citizen: Good for Business, Planet, Nation and Community.
Routledge.

9ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
Lownsbrough, H. (2018). Uber’s practices are morally unacceptable – but a boycott won’t help |
Hannah Lownsbrough. the Guardian. Retrieved 27 February 2018, from
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/13/uber-practices-company-london-
consumer-sumofus
Mulgan, T., 2014. Understanding utilitarianism. Routledge.
Solon, O. (2018). Uber fires more than 20 employees after sexual harassment investigation. the
Guardian. Retrieved 27 February 2018, from
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/06/uber-fires-employees-sexual-harassment-
investigation
Stanoevska-Slabeva, K., Lenz-Kesekamp, V. and Suter, V., 2017. Platforms and the Sharing
Economy: An Analysis EU H2020 Research Project Ps2Share: Participation, Privacy, and Power
in the Sharing Economy, 2017.
The Conversation. (2018). Uber can't be ethical – its business model won't allow it. [online]
Available at: https://theconversation.com/uber-cant-be-ethical-its-business-model-wont-allow-it-
85015 [Accessed 27 Feb. 2018].
Van Hooft, S., 2014. Understanding virtue ethics. Routledge.