Uber and Sexual Harassment

This study analyzes the problem of sexual harassment in Uber and its impact on employees and customers. It identifies the issues responsible for sexual harassment and recommends measures to overcome this issue.

Running Head: UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Uber and Sexual Harassment
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1UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Abstract
Uber is one of the leading brands of app cabs and also providing several other services such
as food delivery and networking development as well. Headquartered in San Francisco,
California, the company has been facing the problem of sexual harassment in the past few
years. A lot of employees have resigned due to this problem and a lot others were forced to
resign. Thus, an analysis has been conducted to establish the fact of the anger in the people
due to this particular issue that has been happening repeatedly in the organization. It has been
observed from the analysis that the respondents have been quite agitated on this issue.
Despite of gender, race and income group, the anger of the people towards sexual harassment
has been the same. This indicates that the company will be facing serious attrition issues if
they do not consider the complaints of the employees seriously in the near future.

2UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Literature Review.......................................................................................................................3
Problem Identification............................................................................................................5
Research Aim.........................................................................................................................5
Research Objective and Hypothesis...........................................................................................5
Method, Sampling and Approach..............................................................................................6
Data Analysis and Summarisation...........................................................................................10
Synthesis, Interpretation, Conclusion, Managerial Implication and Limitations.....................13
References................................................................................................................................15

3UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Introduction
Uber or more specifically Uber Technologies Inc. is a company that involves services
such as taxi-cab, ride sharing, bicycle sharing, food delivery as well as transportation
networking. The comp-any has its headquarters in San Francisco, California. Uber has spread
its operations all across the globe in more than 785 metropolitan cities. The services of the
company can be accessed only with the help of their websites or mobile apps. Recently, there
has been several issues with the company on the account of Sexual Harassment. There has
been a lot of complaints among the rides as well as the employees of the company regarding
the sexual harassment. Thus, this study has been conducted to understand and identify the
issues on sexual harassment faced by the customers so that the company can serve better.
Literature Review
There have been multiple allegations regarding sexual harassment on the company
Uber. This has put the reputation and the corporate culture of the company at stake. As a
result of these complaints regarding sexual harassment and discrimination, quite a large
number of senior executives have been terminated from their jobs. Further, in the year 2017,
the Uber Board has put a lot of pressure on the CEO of the company to resign from the post
as he has been unable to manage the crisis regarding the allegations on the serious issues of
sexual harassment and discrimination (Levin 2018). Instead of the allegations to be abolished,
there has been significant increase in the problem in his tenure of work as the CEO of the
company. All these allegations led to the issue of the work environment of the company to be
“Toxic” (BBC News, 2018). IT has also been found that the regulatory schemes of the
company have been evaded and there has also been failure from the organization to provide
the customers as well the employees welfare and safety. The company is also an economy
sharing company which in other terms is also known as collaborative consumption. This

4UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
indicates that the goods and services provided by the company are shared, provided and
obtained as well and the facility is co-ordinated online on the basis of a community. In this
economy, which is also known as the sharing economy, the relationship between the
organization, the employees and the customers have been affected. As a result of this, several
problems have been on the rise as the potential for unprecedented problems that are of high
risks is most likely to rise (O'Brien 2018). In a situation like this, it has not been possible for
the employment law to tackle the problems especially when there are rapid advances in the
technology in the services in the industry of ride sharing. Hence, a target must be set for the
responses to be regulated so that the relationship in the new economy can be maintained
(Solon 2018).
On February 19, 2017, a former employee of the company Susan Fowler forced the
company of $69 billion to commit its sins. According to her, the company has been extremely
ineffective despite of her several complaints about sexual harassment (Feeney and companies
Uber 2015). She has been working as a site reliability engineer for the company for one year.
There have been several claims that the company protects the bad behaviours such as
harassment of the employees who perform quite well (Wakabayashi 2018). This indicates
that the company is only concerned about its productivity and profit and not on the safety and
the security of its employees. According to some other employees, the company protects the
“brilliant jerks”.
In the month of May 2018, another issue came into the light regarding the sexual
harassment again after the case of Susan Fowler (Griffith, van Esch and Trittenbach 2018).
As it can be seen that the employees have not been rectified on this issue, instead this issue is
still running in the company and a lot of employees have been facing problems on account of
this. The former engineer claimed that she has been harassed by her co-workers at the time of

5UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
the service of ride hailing and despite of several complaints to the human resources
department, all her complains were ignored (Burke 2018).
A lot of employees have left the organization with a claim of sexual harassment and
finally the firm has reached a settlement to pay around $1.9m to the former as well the
current workers who have repeatedly claimed that they have been harassed sexually by other
employees and co-workers. Each employee is about to receive an amount of $34,000. Gender
and ethnicity has been of serious problems for harassment by the employees in the company
(Solon 2018).
Problem Identification
Paying a ransom to the victims is not a solution to this issue. The company has to stop
this harassment the employees are being a victim of. In order to do that, the company has to
identify at first the employees who are responsible for this issue. Further, the company has
already been highlighted with several problems on sexual harassment and has to overcome
this problem. The employees and the customers need to feel safe again so that they can avail
the services comfortably or work comfortably. In order to do that, this research has been
conducted so that the issues can be identified and the condition of the employees and the
customers and their views on Uber can be identified. On the basis of the results, the company
can work on development of the organization and also to remove the stain that the company
has experienced in the past few years.
Research Aim
Thus, on the basis of the literature review and taking into account the issues the
company has been facing, the study has been organized. The main aim of this study is to find
out the issues responsible for sexual harassment and recommend the company on measures
that can be adopted to overcome this issue.

6UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Research Objective and Hypothesis
On the basis of literature review, a few researches have been performed on the brand
value of the company as well as the popularity of the brand Uber. Sexual harassment is one of
the major issues that the company has been facing in the most recent of the times. Thus, in
this study the sexual harassment of the customers and the employees has been considered
mostly. Thus, the purpose of the study is to test the difference of gender, income and race on
sexual harassment. The hypotheses that can be framed to test these research hypotheses are
listed as follows:
H1: There is a existence of significant difference between gender on the matter of anger
towards sexual harassment at Uber.
H2: There is significant difference between race on the matter of anger towards sexual
harassment at Uber.
H3: There is significant difference between the level of income on the matter of anger
towards sexual harassment at Uber.
Method, Sampling and Approach
In order to conduct this study, a survey on the Uber has been conducted. The survey
has been conducted on MTurk. A total of 201 responses have been obtained from the survey
conducted and this indicates that there were 201 participants in this survey. This online
survey platform provided the participants with an incentive of $0.20, which was credited in
their account at amazon.com. This incentive amount was provided to each of the participants
who have completed the survey successfully.
From the analysis of the demographic profile of the variables necessary for this study,
it can be seen that most of the respondents are male and 40.8 percent of the respondents are

7UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
females. Thus, the results obtained will be more from the male point of view than from the
female point of view. The results are shown in table 1 with the help of graphical
representation in figure 1. Again, from the analysis of the variable races, it can be seen
clearly that most of the respondents are Asians followed by Caucasians. 50.2 percent of the
respondents have been found to be Asians and 34.8 percent of the respondents have been
found to be Caucasians. Thus, it can be said that the Asian people are more prone to sexual
harassment than any other race of people. The results are shown in table 2 with the help of
graphical representation in figure 2. Further, from the analysis of the variable income group,
it can be seen clearly that most of the respondents earn less than $30,000 per year. 41.8
percent of the respondents have been found to earn less than $30,000 per year and 28.4
percent of the respondents have been found to earn between $30,000 – $50,000 per year.
Thus, it can be said that the sexual harassment is more in the people with lower income group
and decreases with the increase in the income group. The results are shown in table 3 with the
help of graphical representation in figure 3.
Table 1: Summary Table for the Demographic Profile Gender
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative
Percent
Valid
Male 119 59.2 59.2 59.2
Female 82 40.8 40.8 100.0
Total 201 100.0 100.0

8UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Figure 1: Pie chart showing the percentage of Male and Female Respondents.
Table 2: Summary Table for the Demographic Profile of Races
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative
Percent
Valid
Caucasian 70 34.8 34.8 34.8
African American 9 4.5 4.5 39.3
Latino 13 6.5 6.5 45.8
Asian 101 50.2 50.2 96.0
Others 8 4.0 4.0 100.0
Total 201 100.0 100.0

9UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Figure 2: Bar chart showing the number of Respondents belonging to different Races
Table 3: Summary Table for the Demographic Profile of Income Group
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative
Percent
Valid
Less Than $30,000 84 41.8 41.8 41.8
$30,000 - $50,000 57 28.4 28.4 70.1
$50,000 - $70,000 31 15.4 15.4 85.6
$70,000 - $90,000 19 9.5 9.5 95.0
More than $90,000 10 5.0 5.0 100.0
Total 201 100.0 100.0

10UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Figure 2: Bar chart showing the number of Respondents belonging to different Income
Groups
The stated hypotheses can be tested with the help of application of appropriate
statistical techniques. In the first hypothesis (H1), difference in the anger towards sexual
harassment is tested between two groups, male and female. Thus, to test this hypothesis, the
most appropriate test that can be used is the independent sample t-test.
In the second hypothesis (H2), difference in the anger towards sexual harassment is
tested across different races. There are more than two races between which the difference has
to be tested and hence, ANOVA is the best technique that can be applied to test this
hypothesis.
In the third hypothesis (H3), difference in the anger towards sexual harassment is
tested across different levels of income. There are more than two income levels between
which the difference has to be tested and hence, ANOVA is the best technique that can be
applied to test this hypothesis.

11UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Data Analysis and Summarisation
The dependent variable considered for this study is sexual harassment. It can be seen
clearly from the analysis provided in table 4 that the average rate of anger on sexual
harassment as faced by the employees is 4.9 out of 6, which is quite high. This indicates that
most of the employees have been a victim of sexual harassment or have seen other getting
harassed in front within the office. The standard deviation of the ratings has been found to be
very less as compared to the average value indicating that there is not much difference in the
average rate of anger on sexual harassment of the employees. Most of the respondents have
been observed to be extremely angry on the issue.
Table 4: Descriptive Statistics of Anger towards Sexual Harassment
N Ran
ge
Mini
mum
Maxi
mum
Su
m
Me
an
Std.
Devi
ation
Vari
ance
Skewne
ss
Kurtosi
s
Stat
istic
Stat
isti
c
Stati
stic
Stati
stic
Stat
isti
c
Stat
isti
c
Stati
stic
Stati
stic
Stat
isti
c
St
d.
Er
ro
r
Stat
isti
c
St
d.
Er
ro
r
Iwouldfeelangrywiththese
xualharassmentatUber 201 5.0
0 1.00 6.00 993
.00
4.9
403
1.49
547
2.23
6
-
1.3
83
.1
72
.76
6
.3
41
Valid N (listwise) 201
In order to test the hypothesis stated, the following tests have been run as described in
the methodology section. At first, the independent sample t-test has been conducted to test the
difference in the level of anger for sexual harassment in Uber across gender. From the results
of the analysis, it can be seen very clearly that the p-value of the test is 0.004, which is less
than the level of significance which is considered as 0.05 for the purpose of this study. Thus,
the hypothesis (H1) of the test is accepted and hence, it can be said that there are significant
differences in the anger towards sexual harassment across gender. Moreover, from the table

12UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
of Group statistics given in table 5, it can be seen clearly that the anger towards sexual
harassment is higher in case of females than that in males and hence, it can be said further
that the females are more victimized with this issue.
Table 5: Group Statistics
Gender N Mean Std.
Deviation
Std.
Error
Mean
IwouldfeelangrywiththesexualharassmentatUber Male 119 4.6891 1.64032 .15037
Female 82 5.3049 1.17262 .12949
Table 6: Independent Samples Test
t-test for Equality of Means
t df Sig
.
(2-
tail
ed)
Mean
Differ
ence
Std.
Error
Differ
ence
95%
Confidenc
e Interval
of the
Differenc
e
Low
er
Up
per
Iwouldfeelangrywiththesexual
harassmentatUber
Equa
l
varia
nces
assu
med
-
2.9
23
199 .00
4
-.6158
0
.2107
0
-
1.03
129
-.20
032
Equa
l
varia
nces
not
assu
med
-
3.1
03
198.
709
.00
2
-.6158
0
.1984
4
-
1.00
712
-.22
448
The next test that has been performed is the ANOVA test, which will be used to test
the difference in anger towards sexual harassment across different races. The results of the
ANOVA test have been provided in table 7. The significance value from table 7 can be seen

13UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
to be 0.855, which is quite high from the specified level of significance and hence, it can be
said that the hypothesis (H2) has been rejected. Thus, there is no significant difference
between race on the matter of anger towards sexual harassment at Uber.
Table 7: ANOVA across Races
IwouldfeelangrywiththesexualharassmentatUber
Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Between Groups 3.032 4 .758 .334 .855
Within Groups 444.252 196 2.267
Total 447.284 200
The next test that has been performed is the ANOVA test, which will be used to test
the difference in anger towards sexual harassment across different income groups. The results
of the ANOVA test have been provided in table 8. The significance value from table 8 can be
seen to be 0.375, which is quite high from the specified level of significance and hence, it can
be said that the hypothesis (H3) has been rejected. Thus, there is no significant difference
between income groups on the matter of anger towards sexual harassment at Uber.
Table 8: ANOVA across Income Group
IwouldfeelangrywiththesexualharassmentatUber
Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Between Groups 9.523 4 2.381 1.066 .375
Within Groups 437.761 196 2.233
Total 447.284 200
Synthesis, Interpretation, Conclusion, Managerial Implication and Limitations
Thus, from the analysis conducted so far, it has been observed that the responses
obtained are more of male responses than that of female responses. Sexual harassment cases
have been found to be more common in people with lower income groups and among the
Asian people. But from the analysis of the test, it has been observed that the sexual
harassment is more in females than that in males and there has been a difference in that but
there has been no difference in the sexual harassment in people on the basis of their races or

14UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
income groups. Thus, the dirty and the sick mind of the people working for Uber are
responsible for the sexual harassment among women. Hence, it is important for the company
to look into the complaints of the victims with complete attention and look into the matter
extremely seriously. Terminating a few of the employees responsible for harassment might
provide some sense into the people and some fear of losing their jobs which can be effective
to reduce the problem.
It is also clear from the responses that people, irrespective of their gender, race or
income level are offended by the matter. Some assurance needs to be provided to both the
employees as well as to the customers that any kinds of distorted activities will not be
tolerated by Uber. This might be helpful for the company to build back the brand image
which the company has lost in the past few years.
There are several limitations to this study. The main focus of this study is the sexual
harassment cases in the US and the study has been conducted on people across the globe. The
services of Uber are spread across 84 countries excluding USA and the customers and the
employees in those countries might not be aware of these problems arising in the USA. This
might change the perceptions of the respondents on the issues of harassments and analysing
their responses might not solve the problem of the company in USA necessarily. Thus, the
study could have been restricted to the USA people only.

15UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
References
BBC News. (2018). Uber to pay $1.9m for harassment claims. [online] Available at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45266954 [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].
Burke, R.J., 2018. Reducing Sexual Harassment at Workplace. Effective Executive, 21(2),
pp.51-56.
Feeney, M. and companies Uber, R., 2015. Is ridesharing safe?.
Griffith, D.A., van Esch, P. and Trittenbach, M., 2018. Investigating the mediating effect of
Uber's sexual harassment case on its brand: Does it matter?. Journal of Retailing and
Consumer Services, 43, pp.111-118.
Hacking, I., 2016. Logic of statistical inference. Cambridge University Press.
Levin, S. (2018). Uber to allow sexual assault and harassment victims to sue company.
[online] the Guardian. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/15/uber-sexual-assault-harassment-ride-
hailing-arbitration [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].
O'Brien, S. (2018). Former employee sues Uber for sexual harassment, discrimination.
[online] CNNMoney. Available at: https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/21/technology/uber-
sexual-harassment-discrimination-lawsuit/index.html [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].
Silvey, S.D., 2017. Statistical inference. Routledge.
Solon, O. (2018). Uber fires more than 20 employees after sexual harassment investigation.
[online] the Guardian. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/06/uber-fires-employees-sexual-
harassment-investigation [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

16UBER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Wakabayashi, D. (2018). Former Uber Engineer’s Lawsuit Claims Sexual Harassment.
[online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/technology/uber-
sexual-harassment-lawsuit.html [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].