Unethical Practices and Scandals of Uber: Impact on Stakeholders

This essay analyzes the unethical practices and scandals of Uber and their impact on the company's stakeholders. It discusses the major scandals, the impact on stakeholders, and suggests alternative steps for Uber to deal with these issues.

Individual Essay

TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................4
Unethical Practices and Scandals of Uber and Their Impact on Uber’s Stakeholders................4
Analysis of company policy, code of ethics provision and existing laws regarding any
unethical practices.......................................................................................................................6
Existing laws regarding unethical practices of business..............................................................7
Suggestion of various alternative steps that can be taken by Uber to deal with scandal and
unethical practices of business.....................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Business organisations are required to operate in a moral and ethical manner when
conducting all of their operations within the operational industries in order for their operations to
be sustainably successful within the consumer markets. This report analyses the ethical issues
and scandals of Uber, which is an international business organisation that operates in the global
transportation industry (KLEINMAN, 2017). Uber was founded in 2009, a measly 11 years ago
but has grown and expanded its operations to international markets in a total of 63 different
countries around the globe. Uber operates from its current headquarters in California, USA. Due
to their internationally diversified operations, Uber has been able to significantly increase its
total customer base, account for a total of 110 million distinct individuals all over the world. The
business has also expanded its operation to food delivery functions for their customers through
its subsidiary Uber Eats.
MAIN BODY
Unethical Practices and Scandals of Uber and Their Impact on Uber’s Stakeholders
Throughout its 11 years of operations, Uber has been involved in various unethical
practices and scandals which have surfaced to the eyes of the public resulting in decreased trust
of consumers towards operations of Uber and its reduced brand value nad reputation within the
transportation industry. The major unethical practices of Uber and the major scandals of the
transportation business organisation are as follows:
Greyball: One of the most significant scandals that Uber was involved in, was related to the
highly unethical digital software that was created and used by Uber called Greyball. Uber in
2014 created a digital software called Greyball, which was used to collect data from the various
Uber applications and other external sources in order to deny providing transportation services to
certain select individuals (Bensinger, 2017). Uber made use of the Greyball software to show
ghost cars that were driven by fake drivers to the selected individuals, allowing for the real
drivers a way to cancel the rides that were booked by these selected individuals. Upon further
investigation, it was found out that Uber also used the Greyball software with the intention to

evade the government authorities and police officers in select areas. Investigation into Uber’s
Greyball software showcased to the public that Uber made use of the software to intentionally
hide from or evade the regulating officers and also deny service to a total of 29 regulating
officers in 2014. After the investigation in 2017, Uber themselves were forced to admit and
publically apologise that they did in fact make use of the Greyball software with the intention to
thwart the governing regulating officers and promised to stop making use of the highly unethical
software for their future operations.
God View: Another major scandal that Uber was involved in during the period of 2014 related to
making highly immoral and unethical usage of their smartphone application towards being able
to dynamically track the movements of its customers which has come to be known as God View.
Upon investigation it was found out that Uber drivers and employees were making highly
immoral and unethical use of their smartphone application and infringing upon the privacy of
their customers by tracking the movements of their several customers in addition to high profile
journalists and politicians.
Data Breaches: Uber has also breached the data security and privacy of their customers and
drivers in 2015, when the business organisation found out that the sensitive and confidential
details of their 50,000 drivers relating to their names and license plate numbers had been leaked
and disclosed to external forces. Rather than inform the drivers themselves of this accidental data
breach, instead Uber chose to wait for more than five months towards notifying the affected
individuals, by which time their data had been spread around the entire world showcasing
another immensely immoral and unethical behaviour at Uber. In 2017, Uber again was part of a
data breach in which confidential personal information of half a million of their drivers and 57
million different customers had also been leaked to the external forces (Newcomer, 2017). This
confidential data related to the names, phone numbers, licence information, email addresses of
close to 58 million individuals being leaked online. Uber also tried to conceal this data breach
and tried to bribe the hackers with $100,000as ransom to delete the information.
Impact of Unethical Practices and Scandals on Uber’s Stakeholders:

As Uber has been involved in numerous scandals and ethical breaches during its 11 years
of operations within the global transportation industry, this has had a significant negative impact
on its various stakeholders such as its customers, ownership, management and employees. The
customers have effectively lost their trust towards the operations conducted by Uber and are
significantly worried about the data they are mandated to share with Uber as Uber has been quite
unsuccessful towards being able to secure and protect the confidential and sensitive private data
of their customers. This has resulted in decreased brand value for Uber in the consumer markets.
The various scandals and unethical issues of Uber have also adversely affected its employees,
with the employees feeling decreased motivation and job satisfaction metrics owing to having to
operate in such an unethical business organisation, with the few employees who have come out
in the public in regards to the blatant unethical practices adopted by Uber, getting fired,
presumably for different operational reasons (Chin, 2018). The scandals and unethical practices
adopted by Uber in the past have also had an adverse impact on its leadership as Uber’s founder
Mr. Travis Kalanick was also forced to resign owing to the various scandals that Uber has been
involved in over the years. Uber’s scandals and unethical practices have also had a negative
impact on the business’s ability to find investors from the external markets, as many of its
pervious investors and shareholders have tried to distance themselves from the operations of
Uber after their major scandals surfaced to the public. Overall the impact of the various unethical
scandals that Uber has been involved in through the years has had a significantly negative impact
on the business organisation and its various stakeholders.
Analysis of company policy, code of ethics provision and existing laws regarding any unethical
practices
There are several key policies and procedure, code of ethical provision that are made by
Uber which need to be followed by each employees working in organisation so that no harm can
be caused to other individuals. The main purpose of creating code of ethical provision was to
created honest and accountable work culture for long term growth and survival of firm (Saha and
et.al., 2020). Another objectives of Uber was to maintained fair and accurate records or financial
books so that all stakeholders get information regarding actual profit and expenses of company.
Deterrence of wrongdoing is one of the main motivate of making different policies and ethical
provision in Uber.

Provide respect to each individual: Uber has stated in its policies and ethical provision that it
take right decision by providing equal respect, recognition to each individual working in
enterprise. Top manager of company ensure open and friendly environment provided to
employees so that they are free to share their problem, grievance and ideas which are most useful
for growth and success of enterprise (Wilson, 2018). In its policies it have prohibited
harassment, follow all legal laws such as equality act, minimum payment of wages to workers
and health and safety act.
Take steps towards welfare of society or giving back: Another point of uber policies and
ethical code of provision is that company initiate various steps to conserve or preserve natural
resources of environment so that people can have better lifestyles. There are limited resources in
environment so Uber ensured that it make optimum utilisation of resources and minimise amount
of wastages so that maximum benefits can be given to society.
Communication policy: Uber have followed communication policy in order to share all relevant
information about firm through use of different social media tools to end customers or people
living in society. This policy has helped company and employees to share respective information
on various platforms so that no harm can be caused to firm.
Fair trade and competitors: There are two laws which have been made by government to
promote fair competition and trade between countries such as competition and antitrust laws.
Uber have followed both laws while operating its function in different countries to avoid large
amount of criminal penalties and large fines (Luro, Navarro and Sundstedt, 2017).
Accurate marketing: Uber have followed ethical marketing practices in order to increase its
sales volume and number of customers. Company always makes claim about its products and
services are supported by reliable evidence so that people can trust and have better experienced.
Uber have strictly prohibited unfair advertisement in order to pursue individual to prefer its
products as compared to others. So, as per uber it provide fair, truthful and non misleading
information for smooth operation of business.
Competitive intelligence: It can be stated that uber competitive Intelligence policy has made
which permit which practices can be used to gather information about competitors. It have also
explained about practices that are fraud and misrepresentation to collect information of
competitors.

Protection of Uber asset and information: This is one of the policies of uber which stated that
company protect its crucial information such as employees or customers data and intellectual
property of firm so that no harm can be caused to other individuals. Company has use patent,
trademarks and copyright in order to protect its intellectual property such as products and
services, logo, innovative technology so that other competitors cannot make use of such property
to attract diverse individual for earning profit.
Existing laws regarding unethical practices of business
There are several laws that have been made by government to prohibited unethical
practices of companies so that no harm can be caused to other people. Uber have followed
unethical practices while has adversely impacted on brand image and market share of enterprise.
Therefore various laws that are present regarding unethical practices of business can be
illustrated as follows:
Data protection and general protection regulation: It is law which stated that while
processing of data that is collection, using, storing or destroying information of any individual
then GDRP applies. Companies before using any personal data or information of person have to
take permission from individual so that no harm can be caused to it in future circumstances
(Gehner and Oughton, 2016). Ubers has not protected information of its customers so it is
unethical practices that impacted on overall brand image and reputation of firm.
Health and safety law: It can be stated that companies while operating its functions need to
ensure health and safety of employees and customers. It should ensure that no harm is caused to
individual life due to practices of firm. Uber have not followed this law made by government as
it has not provided safety to customer’s information which can be used for undesirable purpose.
Privacy and security law: It is another law that state companies need to protect its employees
and customers detailed so that no one make undesirable use of it for personal gain. In this law
privacy and security of people need to be ensured by companies in order to avoid penalty or fines
in future circumstances (Tulloch, French and Hepburn, 2019). Uber by using greyball software
have gathered information from external sources and uber application for no providing services
to specific individual. So, gathering such information is unethical and illegal which have
impacted on sales volume, customers satisfaction and profit margin of firm.

Suggestion of various alternative steps that can be taken by Uber to deal with scandal and
unethical practices of business
UBER for gaining higher business value of goodwill among customers have to work on
improving various ethical business practices and strong goals formatively to keep wide
productive goals variable strong and transparent from customers point so they feel safe and
comforatble to choose the services. It has also been found that there are various rise coming up
in scansdals where customers sfaety has not been taken widely serious for brand goodwill where
it has been facing high losess from past global busines scenario. The company busines managers
and owners shall focus to pertain high focus for bringing on ethical business practises where
employees should also be given various course of training to forge ahead for gaining on
stronger synergy of goodwill and wider business arena.
 UBER being gloabl brand shall focus onto developing new services and productive
dvelopemnt within new productive dvelopment arena where brand should not only
promise wider synergy of sfaety stanadrds for all customers with high quality innovation
bringing up within their conviennt facilities. The brand shall also focus to pertain wide
use of technology integrated CCTV cameras and also provide wide options within app
services hwre customers can opertate with high convienece for how to book rides based
on various goals and wide synergy of effective opertaions (Ferrell, Harrison and Hair,
2019).
 UBER bieng one of the most used brand should function onto improving its ethical
business functioning levels where the company must aim to determine innovative use of
wide ratioanal synergy of innovation and levergae higher relative transperancy among
thei operations. Emploiyees should be given best training facilities to pertain onto wider
cutsomer staisfcation services and also bring on various metrics through whcih they
bring on wider technical strong servuces whcih will not only enhance goodwill but also
develop new goals for bringing on profit paradigms.
 UBER for developing ethical business prcatices should also provide various customers
globally to book their convient rides based on their comfortable exprince and how to
bring on keen synergy of competitve innpovation for gainingon wider productive
investment. The company shall be fucntioanlly large for yielding onto productive goals
and also train managment level emloyees for delivering best services to varired customers

who are not only rapidly evolving, but also there are wide operagtions coming up which
shall be dveloped onto faster demands.
 UBER bieng highly used ride book app should keep innoavtoive high quality operational
magement tools for keeping data of gloabl customers safe and widley focused for
developing new end goals and wider digital marketing pardigms within business. The
brand also fucntionally shpould reach out to varied paradigms of keeoi ng customers data
sfaely within company services, and also to enhance new productive goals for gaining
new end targets for competitevly developing keen synergy of comtiupous innovation and
adptoion of best levarging paradigms within internal factors for comepotitively
combating external factors (Ciulla, 2020).
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from above report that Uber has involved in unethical business
practices which have lead to big scandals and impacted on overall reputation of firm in
competitive market. It can also be stated that company have make various policies and procedure
to promote ethical practices in enterprise despite of fact there are various issue or unethical
practice were present in organisation. At last it can be illustrated from above report that company
can make use of following suggestion or recommendation to avoid unethical practices and
regained customer satisfaction.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bensinger, G., 2017. Uber CEO Takes a Break as Scandals Roil Firm. The Wall Street Journal.
Chin, J., 2018. Engineering company culture change: Regaining public trust after scandal.
Women Leading Change: Case Studies on Women, Gender, and Feminism.3(1).
Ciulla, J. B., 2020. Business ethics as moral imagination. In The Search for Ethics in Leadership,
Business, and Beyond (pp. 121-129). Springer, Cham.
Ferrell, O. C., Harrison, D. E., and Hair, J. F., 2019. Business ethics, corporate social
responsibility, and brand attitudes: An exploratory study. Journal of Business
Research, 95, pp.491-501.
Gehner, M. and Oughton, D., 2016. Ethical challenges in social media engagement and research:
considerations for code of engagement practices. Journal of Radiological
Protection, 36(2). p.S187.
KLEINMAN, Z., 2017. Uber: The scandals that drove Travis Kalanick out. BBC News.
Luro, F. L., Navarro, D. and Sundstedt, V., 2017, November. Ethical considerations for the use
of virtual reality: an evaluation of practices in academia and industry. In Proceedings of
the 27th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and 22nd
Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments (pp. 141-148).
Newcomer, E., 2017. Uber CEO to take leave, have diminished role after scandals,” bloomberg
(June 13).
Saha, R. and et.al., 2020. Effect of ethical leadership and corporate social responsibility on firm
performance: A systematic review. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental
Management, 27(2). pp.409-429.
Tulloch, A., French, T. and Hepburn, L .A., 2019. Ethics by Design. Exploring Experiences of
Harmony and Dissonance in Ethical Practice. The Design Journal, 22(sup1). pp.401-
416.
Wilson, V., 2018. Succession planning models, conceptual maps: Ethical considerations and best
practices. In Succession planning (pp. 199-211). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.