Ethical Practices and Impact on Stakeholders: A Case Study of Uber

Business Ethics
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Executive summary
The report has discusses about ethical practices that need to be followed by Uber for long
term growth and expansion of business and satisfaction of customers’ needs. It has also
explained that various impact of ethical and unethical practices on stakeholders. Business ethics
theories are used to explain various ethical manner that need to be followed by management
while performing its function.
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TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
PART 1............................................................................................................................................4
Ethical Issues in Case Study........................................................................................................4
Handling of Ethical Issue By Business Organisation..................................................................4
Corporate Social Responsibility..................................................................................................5
Part 2................................................................................................................................................7
Theories of business ethics..........................................................................................................7
Part 3................................................................................................................................................9
Impact of ethical practices on internal and external stakeholders of firm...................................9
Impact of unethical practices on internal and external stakeholders of firm...............................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCE................................................................................................................................11
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INTRODUCTION
Ethics refers to values, standard and moral principle that need to be followed by
individual and organisation for smooth operation of business and strong establishment of brand
image. Organisation that gives higher importance to ethics principle is able to gain maximum
customers satisfaction and expand its operation in the industry. CSR is a social responsibility that
needs to be followed by each organisation in order to grow, sustain its business for long term.
This report is about case study of Uber, Uber and more Uber that has found to engage in
unethical practice which has impacted on overall brand image of company. Various theories of
ethics are used to discuss about Uber, Uber and more Uber case study such as normative and
descriptive. At the last it explained about the way ethical and unethical practices of company
impact on internal and external stakeholders.
PART 1
Ethical Issues in Case Study
The case study chosen for the purposes of this report is that of Uber. In February 2017, a
former Uber employee by the name of Ms. Susan Fowler alleged for Uber to possess an
organisational culture that encourages and ignores sexual harassment against women. This raised
criminal probes against the business and questions about its leadership and culture. Further in
May, Uber was found to be criminally probed by the Justice Department for use of internally
developed digital software called “Greyball” used by the business with the intention to avoid
authorities and regulators in illegally operating areas (The 10 Biggest Business Scandals of 2017,
2017). All these unethical criminal allegations resulted in switching of Uber leadership from
Travis Kalanick to Dara Khosrowshahi. But after this leadership change, Uber’s operations were
banned in London and in November, Uber’s database got hacked endangering the private data of
around 57 million customers of Uber. All this culminated into 10% loss of market share for Uber
and devaluation of business by around 20$ billion.
Handling of Ethical Issue By Business Organisation
As Uber was hit with numerous unethical scandals, all in the span of one fiscal year its
handling of these scandals was slow in nature as the business was trying to address its previous
scandals. To address the sexual harassment allegations against Uber, they ended up hiring Eric
Holder, a former attorney journal to investigate the claims by Ms Fowler, with members of
Uber’s board of directors also overseeing the investigation. As a direct result of this
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