A Business Case Analysis of Uber: Problems, Culture, and Financials

This case study examines the overarching problems faced by Uber, a transportation and technology company, particularly in 2017. It highlights issues such as a toxic workplace culture, legal charges related to denial of service, underpayment of drivers, allegations of sexual harassment leading to th...Read More

Running head: BUSINESS CASE ANALYSIS
Business Case Analysis
A Case Study on the Overarching Problem for Uber
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1BUSINESS CASE ANALYSIS
Issues faced by Uber Company
Uber, a start-up that started its journey in 2009, is a transportation cum technological
company with a $22 billion capital funding. It deals with ride-sharing, food delivery, bicycle-
sharing, and taxi cab having headquarter in California. There are more than sixteen thousand
employees associated with this organization (Cannon & Summers, 2014). However, certain
issues and scandals maligned the name of the company in the year 2017 and the employees were
at a critical situation. These issues are described below-
i. Toxic workplace culture: The culture within the organization got abruptly critical
and intolerable in the early 2017. The employees ended up bringing and unreliable
and impractical solutions to market problems and it lead the organization to a very
toxic state. The working employees at Uber made a black spot on their career.
Moreover, the ex-Uber employees could not get good job due to their maligned
experience in Uber. The superiors in the organization stimulated aggression and
influenced the employees to criticize other employees (Llc’s & Waymo’s, 2017).
ii. Legal charge due to denial of service: A case was filed against Uber for violating
Americans with Disabilities Act as it denied to drop a woman suffering from cerebral
palsy as the woman was with her service dog (DeBruyne, 2017).
iii. Underpayment of Uber drivers: The Company was paying allegedly lower amount
to the drivers than their deserved salaries in 2017 (Jordan, 2017).
iv. Allegations on sexual harassment: On February, 2017, one of the female Uber
engineers was allegedly harassed sexually and was threatened to be terminated form
the organization. The case was filed and legal action was taken and as a result, 20

2BUSINESS CASE ANALYSIS
employees were fired. The entire management of the organization shook up due to
this case and finally the CEO Mr. Kalanick resigned from his position (Chin, 2018).
v. Minimization of tax liability: The Company tried to depend on the off-shore
companies to reduce the amount of taxes to be paid to the Government (Jordan,
2017).
Description of the present financial quantitative data
The organization has been shaken up financially after all the allegations, toxic working
environment, erroneous leadership practices engulfed the company’s reputation and ultimately
faced a financial loss of $1.5 billion in Q3 of 2017 (DeBruyne, 2017). The change of the
financial condition started from 2016 with a financial loss of $2.8 billion and it became worse
day by day. The financial stability shook up more after the resignation of the CEO Kalanick.
However, recently the company is tasting the revenue and growth with the business strategy of
the new CEO D. Khosrowshahi and the profit calculated up to $2.5 billion in Q1 of 2018.
Despite of the profit of the organization in the first quarter, the slow growth resulted a loss of
$891 million. After all the financial crisis, employee staying issues, unstable market scenarios,
the newly adopted strategy of business diversity by the current CEO has embraced the
company’s growth and revenue (DeBruyne, 2017).

3BUSINESS CASE ANALYSIS
References
Cannon, S., & Summers, L. H. (2014). How Uber and the sharing economy can win over
regulators. Harvard business review, 13(10), 24-28.
Chin, J. (2018). Engineering Company Culture Change: Regaining Public Trust After
Scandal. Women Leading Change: Case Studies on Women, Gender, and Feminism, 2(2).
DeBruyne, N. L. (2017). Uber drivers: A disputed employment relationship in light of the
sharing economy. Chi.-Kent L. Rev., 92, 289.
Jordan, J. M. (2017). Challenges to large-scale digital organization: the case of Uber. Journal of
Organization Design, 6(1), 11.
Llc’s, P. W., & waymo’s, O. O. (2017). Uber technologies, inc.; ottomotto llc; otto trucking llc,
defendants.