Case Study: Ethical Issues of Uber and Recommendations

This case study critically evaluates Uber's business ethics, focusing on a period marked by significant media attention and customer complaints. The study examines the ethical issues highlighted in media reports, particularly concerning app outages, driver earnings, and customer service problems like incorrect charges and undelivered food. It analyzes Uber's code of conduct in light of these events, assessing the company's response and internal policies. The analysis includes a review of the new code of conduct, safety practices, and incident response teams. The study concludes with specific recommendations for Uber, emphasizing the importance of addressing technical issues, ensuring fair wages for drivers, promoting transparency, and prioritizing customer and driver safety. The case study also stresses the need for proactive measures to prevent future crises and maintain a positive public image.

Contemporary business ethics: Case study
of Uber

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Ethical issues highlighted in the media article................................................................................3
Viewpoint on current case situation in support to company’s code of conduct..............................3
Recommendations & Conclusions...................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
The present study is based on the critical evaluation and analysis of the business ethics case of
Uber by considering the major news articles and media content that rose at the time of the case.
Along with this, appropriate discussions, analysis and findings will be conducted so that relevant
justifications and recommendations can be drawn. In addition to this, the study will consider the
analysis of their code of ethics to support the concluding argument regarding their ethical case
situation of Uber.
ETHICAL ISSUES HIGHLIGHTED IN THE MEDIA ARTICLE
Uber is a Transportation Network Corporation offering services including taxi cab hailing, peer-
to-peer ridesharing, food delivery and other transportation services. The apps of Uber faced
global outrage lately, with rapid complaints coming from multiple users regarding the ordered
food and booked drivers. Some of the customers’ complaint that they were charged for the taxi
which they never took. The renowned rideshare app and food delivery app of Uber gone through
worldwide outage with the users in Australia, making a complaint of terrible issues (Zhao and et
al., 2019). Within Australia, the major issue was that primarily the drivers were impacted, and
the majority of the complaints were made from the side of drivers, making a statement that they
were not able to claim or operate their earnings all because of the outrage(Christian, 2018).
Certain drivers of Uber made a complaint that they picked up the placed food order,but after that,
the address of customer and details to contact them did not show up. The issues differed from
passengers not being able to book a car or taxi, while the drivers were not able to claim the
payment for the given rides, unable to see where they were picking the customer up.
The most popular ride-share app that is Uber recently got stuck in trouble, wherein it experienced
issues in and around the world with the reports that the inherent program is down in places such
as Australia. It was reported that users as well as drivers on the app are adversely impacted with
the individuals not capable of booking rides and secure the trips (Young and Farber, 2019). To
face the issue, the company reassured users that their team is operating on the same to backup the
program and run it as smooth as possible. The company deeply apologized for the mistake and
made efforts to restore the functionality(Burns, 2018).

Anger arouses among drivers and customers of Uber aftermath of the apparent service outage.
The problem appeared to impact every aspect from meal delivery to car rides. Problems were
being reported by users with the help of the ride-hailing app and Uber Eats.The drivers’
complaint that they were not able to access the payments cannot requests for trips, being not able
to see customer location and were stuck with the food and meals been undelivered (Dobeson,
2018). On the other hand, customer faced the issue of unnecessary charge of payments of the
services they did not derive and the non-delivery of food items.
VIEWPOINT ON CURRENT CASE SITUATION IN SUPPORT TO
COMPANY’S CODE OF CONDUCT
The support of Uber mentioned in a statement lately that, they are aware of the technical issue
that is avoiding users from making use of the app. They also apologized for the user
inconvenience and taking into account all the major factors to resolve the issue (Standing,
Standing and Biermann, 2019). It was noticed that the major issue lasted for three hours all
because of the outrage and technical problems; the company intentionally did not conduct it
however it was the problem that arouses in mobile apps and technical aspects. Confirmation was
made by Uber that all of their apps will be fixed and operated fully, yet the root of the outage is
still unclear. The app included problems inclusive of navigations(Ahmed and et al., 2016).
After the issue, the company positioned a new code of conduct especially meant for drivers and
customers, which states guidelines on the treatment of consumers with respect and dignity while
taking full actions for their safety and making compliance with all specified laws with updated
documents in place (Montero, 2019). Furthermore, the new advisory board will be set by the
company to review the safety practices and assist the company on placing safety functions to the
same platform (Carol and Ann, 2012). Being the part of the new quality assurance program, the
timely audit and reports of the drivers of their conduct in respect with the adherence to the code
of conduct will be collected by the security professionals as well as law enforcement(Christian,
2018). Additionally, the company also established incident response groups and teams
worldwide to address with the urgency while managing the safety consideration alongside.
Recently, Uber also launched an effort named as “180 Days of Change” aiming to improve the

outreach to drivers, this is inclusive of accumulating an option of tipping and assisting the drivers
to acquire the injury insurance protection.
It has been analyzed that the android apps within Australia tends to be having issues with the
app, and cannot see any cars, area of picking up and thereby making the app not usable. It was
claimed that the app seems broken and clashed (Ellison, 2018). To respond to this issue, Uber
instantly took help from support, and with the help of security professionals and team it fixed the
issues, it was held that the issue took place for three hours and after that company attempted all
its efforts to fix and fully operate the app. It placed out various tools and policies so that drivers
and customer to assist the customer in tracking their rides and orders effectively.
Since, the company is good at offering convenience and ease to customers with cashless
services; however in spite of all these perks the company has faced various issues and negative
media and press recently due to its app crashes, outages, sexual harassment technical and
security issues and so on. Given, Uber declared several upcoming rationales, some of the users
stated that outage was not held on the accidental basis,but it was caused by a hack or even a
double bluff conducted by the company itself. In the face of the issue, the company rapidly
provided a response to lots of angry posts and complaints with the apology. The full extent of the
problem is not still clear. Other customer and drivers have been able to employ the services
without any disruption; the massive technical issue has been acknowledged that was faced in
Australia all over. Thus the declaration washeld by the Transport Workers Union that the
company must provide compensation to drivers who attempted to log in to the app at that day
and were unable to, they must take the full duty to provide them with the lost wages.
RECOMMENDATIONS & CONCLUSION
On the basis of above analysis, it can be concluded thatthe company must put close
considerations of its app issues and gaps and immediately solve it with the help of technical
experts and there must always be a backup plan if an emergency situation arises. It is suggested
to the company that it must provide drivers with living wages while making contributions to
payroll tax to the employee compensations, unemployment insurance and social security this will
all make Uber more ethical (Ferrell, Fraedrich and Ferrell, 2018). It is essential that Uber
stimulates trust and fairness amid all, for this, it must ensure stability among its legal as well as

non-legal representation and must implement a more transparent and viable approach towards
ethics, law and legal. This will help in empowering users communities to take part in decision
making, one of the best ways for Uber to be more ethical is that it should go for actual,
enforceable and credible commitment to its users and drivers wherein it operates to ensure better
functionality and operations. The company is also required to make changes according to the
feedback provided by customers and drivers. By considering the same management must foresee
the complaints closely to ensure that crises won’t happen again. It is extremely crucial that Uber
manages its drivers efficiently; it must not consider multitasking of workers, it must provide
optimum time to them to pickup or drop a customer, as they are generally forced to take more
rides and this can result in more of incidents (Mitchell, 2018). In addition, it is also vital that the
company takes full responsibility for the safety of the customer, and choose their workforce
wisely that is able to handle any situation if any problem arises.
Thus, it can be concluded that Uber hasgone through a serious outage recently due to app faults
and technical problems. However the company fixed the issue with considering a new code of
conduct and implying with strict safety assurances and legal compliance. The company should
take care of all the users, community, drivers and customers involved by making better strategies
and taking strict guidelines, assurance, adherence and rules into account.It is significant that the
company maintains good customer and working relationship to rebuild trusts which were lost
due to negative media and press and its unethical aspects involved in the business.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Ahmed, S.I., Bidwell, N.J., Zade, H., Muralidhar, S.H., Dhareshwar, A., Karachiwala, B.,
Tandong, C.N. and O'Neill, J., 2016, May. Peer-to-peer in the Workplace: A View from the
Road. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (pp. 5063-5075). ACM.
Carol, A. B., and Ann K. B., 2012. Business and Society. Ethics and Stakeholder Management, 8
edn., Cengage Learning.
Ferrell, OC., Fraedrich, J. and Ferrell, L, 2018. Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and
Cases, 12th ed, South Western, Cengage Learning.
Montero, J.J., 2019. Regulating Transport Platforms: The Case of Carpooling in Europe. In The
Governance of Smart Transportation Systems (pp. 13-35). Springer, Cham.
Standing, C., Standing, S. and Biermann, S., 2019. The implications of the sharing economy for
transport. Transport Reviews, 39(2), pp.226-242.
Young, M. and Farber, S., 2019. The who, why, and when of Uber and other ride-hailing trips:
An examination of a large sample household travel survey. Transportation Research Part A:
Policy and Practice, 119, pp.383-392.
Zhao, Q., Zuo, C., Pellegrino, G. and Zhiqiang, L., 2019. Geo-locating Drivers: A Study of
Sensitive Data Leakage in Ride-Hailing Services. In Annual Network and Distributed System
Security symposium, February 2019 (NDSS 2019). 1(1). 25-30.
Online
Burns, J., 2018. Uber Riders And Drivers Report Global Outages Monday. (Online). Available
from < https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2018/12/10/uber-riders-and-drivers-ubereats-
down-monday/#27c0a945646c>. [Accessed 30 January 2019].
Christian, N., 2018. Uber app back after global outage (Online). Available from <
https://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/news/uber-says-no-rideshare-app-down-
internationally/3598599/ >. [Accessed 30 January 2019].
Christian, N., 2018. Uber says no, rideshare app experienced global outage today (Online).
Available from <https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/uber-says-no-
rideshare-app-experienced-global-outage-today/news-story/
1ed402d137949771d40dd137ee130047> [Accessed 30 January 2019].

Dobeson, S., 2018. Uber is experiencing a worldwide outage and people are not coping!
(Online). Available from <http://www.mygc.com.au/uber-is-experiencing-a-worldwide-outage-
and-people-are-not-coping/>. [Accessed 30 January 2019.].
Ellison, S., 2018. Uber App Goes Down For Drivers, Other Users (Online). Available from
<https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/national-international/Uber-App-Down-
502400391.html>. [Accessed 30 January 2019.].
Mitchell. N, 2018. Uber down: Ride-sharing service in chaos after app crashes (Online).
Available from <https://www.3aw.com.au/uber-down-ride-sharing-app-in-chaos-after-app-
crashes/>. [Accessed 30 January 2019.].