Critical Report: UBER's Travis Kalanick's Rollercoaster Reign

This report presents a critical analysis of the leadership issues within UBER, specifically focusing on the tenure of Travis Kalanick. The report delves into the leadership styles employed, contrasting transactional and transformational approaches and their impact on the organization. It highlights instances of unethical behavior, sexism, and a toxic work environment, linking these issues to the leadership at the top. The discussion covers the importance of leadership, expected effects of poor leadership, and provides recommendations for UBER to improve its governance and leadership practices. The report emphasizes the need for ethical leadership, proper feedback mechanisms, and a shift towards a more responsible and mature approach to business. The analysis draws on various academic sources to support its arguments, ultimately concluding that UBER's problems stem from a lack of effective leadership and a need for significant change.

Critical Report on the Case Study of
“UBER Travis Kalanick’s rollercoaster
reign”
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Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION 3
2. THE DISCUSSION 4
2.1 IMPORTANCE OF LEADERSHIP 5
2.2 EXPECTED EFFECTS 5
3. RECOMMENDATIONS 7
4. CONCLUSION 8
5. REFERENCE LIST 9
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1. Introduction
Post going through case study, “UBER Travis Kalanick’s rollercoaster reign”, the report
hereby presented would discuss and present issues in the organization attributed to leadership
style, which has brought the startup worth $70 billion to an episode of nightmare and ridicule
of world of successful CEOs, of management gurus as well as students and everyone else
who is interested in UBER.
The case study starkly brings forward the issue of leadership. Improper leadership style has
prompted potential culture problem within organization. In absence of a firm leadership the
organization has entered zone of criticism in matters related to the sexism in culture, male
dominance, adoption of inappropriate means etc. Through the report emphasis has been laid
on how good leadership could make or mar an organization’s worth. How a good leadership
be the catalyst to carry the organization to its pinnacle and how a misguided leadership could
cause damage to its reputation and prevent building a decent brand image. It shall discuss the
two traits of leadership mainly transactional and transformational in Uber’s context.
Finally, the report shall quickly provide some recommendations that could be immediately be
adopted by UBER to turn over a new leaf.
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2. The Discussion
The case study “UBER Travis Kalanick’s rollercoaster reign” presents various issues
currently happening with UBER or has happened in recent past. The report talks of the brash
behaviour of Mr. Kalanick who could go to any length to achieve his goals. That would
include him being callous and throwing around his machoism on peers. Mr. Kalanick has
entered confrontations and beratements with his own company drivers, encouraged a culture
of sexism and male dominance, there are also rumours of UBER taking up unethical means to
pick up employees from other institutions to bring them into his own, firing them when there
is media/public heat, flouting laws and adopting means to take advantage of other's
technology and tweak it for self-purpose fulfillment. UBER’s reputation is also muddled
when it comes to handling subject of ‘women’. With Mr. Kalanick obtaining medical report
of woman from India who was raped by the UBER driver, to him joking about service of
‘Boob-er’ an on demand for women-only service in GQ magazine, picking up escorts in
karaoke bars, promising ‘hot chick' drivers for maximum 20 minutes – a promotion technique
for Lyon etc. All in all, Mr. Kalanick's approach is nowhere near reserved and safe zone. He
has shown his style of a crappy businessman and has not presented the position he has
achieved today with responsibility.
The primary reason of this being lack of leadership from top management. The two types of
leadership which could be mentioned here would be transactional and transformational
leadership. A transactional leader would strictly restrict themselves to a transaction with his
subordinates, mostly to get the performance. This is also called as management leadership.
He would mostly use rewards and punishments for getting things done. He would mostly be
doing damage control and strategizing post happenings to take up a defensive stance. Such
leaders would be more focused on executing a plan and would use the motivation factor of
the employee to get things done by them. Superb example could be coach of football team
(Dumdum, Lowe & Avolio, 2013, p.41). The coach has a plan which he usually discusses
with the team and asks them to take up roles for proper execution. A transformational leader
would rather become the reason for bringing about change in his team. He works along with
his subordinates to bring about the desired transformations. Such a leader, would mostly rely
on charisma and infuse enthusiasm in his team. He would be proactive in his dealings and
strategies which could be innovative. They are said to have vision and charisma, they
empower as well as could stimulate intellectually. Steve Jobs is an example of such a
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leadership (Kark & Shamir, 2013, p.82). He influenced not only Apple but inspired aspiring
leaders alike.
2.1 Importance of Leadership
Leadership issues are evident in UBER case. We can gauge after reading the case study that
Mr. Travanick uses arbitrary leadership which forces his colleagues to finish and accomplish
the targets set by him. That could also be one of the reasons why there is a constricted
environment in the organization. A good leader must understand and improvise on needs of
his colleagues to collectively achieve their goals. Mr. Travanick needs to bring about a mix of
transformational and transactional leadership styles within his management techniques to
effectively deploy strategies. He needs to understand the current scenario of the organization
and must quickly arrest the unrest before the situation gets further out of control. By using
appropriate leadership skills, he would not only be able to gain respect, he would also be able
to repair the brand image of UBER. There are issues such as numerous sexual harassment
cases unaddressed, unethical approach to sensitive issues such as obtaining medical records
of a rape victim, reviewing it and commenting about it too openly, open sexism in office and
behavior, e.g. - picking up escort women from an escort karaoke bar, letting the culture of
male dominance prevail etc. – which makes it clear the management on the top clearly is
responsible for fostering organizational sexism. It is evident that representation of an
organization in correct light is vital to a good external brand image and internal
organizational culture where employees believe in the message being presented and act in the
same light instead of straying. The leadership at Uber has yet to overcome this challenge. In
fact, Uber continues to attempt and scrape its way up the ranking at the price of immoral
status and a deprived public image, and the fresh intensification about the business's noxious
workplace environment is a further suggestion of the lack of willingness in management to
change things. Installation of proper systems to check spreading of a negative culture
elements is required. As part of an image building of the organization, the processes would
require to be strengthened.
2.2 Expected Effects
To maintain service standards, it is necessary to have mechanisms within the organization to
gauge performance. Without a proper feedback mechanism, all attempts to maintain a good
process is a failed attempt (Doyle, Francis & Tannenbaum, 2013). Time and again Uber has
crossed the boundaries of an ethical way of business (Rosenblat & Stark, 2016) and resorted
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to means to overthrow its competitors or gain more customers. There are a lot of Silicon
Valley entrepreneurs who present a case of strong desperation to achieving their visions
(Cramer & Krueger, 2016, p. 179) while de-prioritizing another ethos. Their organizations are
simply fanatical with achieving growth and winning. Example being attempts to skirt
APPLE’s privacy rules – the case brought a lot of bad publicity to UBER, they lost lots of
subscribers and it took them almost 2 years to recover. Again, usage of ‘Greyball’ (Dudley,
Banister & Schwanen, 2017) which provided UBER (Cohen et al., 2016) with geolocation
information and get permits to localities where they were denied first. It has been researched
and proved as well that usage of ethical means is important to safeguarding the organization
from the damage of litigations, allegations of fraud (Chen, Mislove & Wilson, 2015, p.499),
multiplying positive brand image and establishing trust with customers to foster business
further. Uber has already worked on a feedback system from its end customers about their
services but internally as well, it should set up feedback mechanisms to ensure that the
organization is functioning under an ethical leadership sticking to ethical means only for
driving results.
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3. Recommendations
Some of the recommendations for UBER could be implementing a strong body within the
self for good-governance (Castaner & Kavadis, 2013, p. 865). The good governance would
oversee that the activities and practices that are carried out within the organization are not
compromising and ethical (Kelly, Sullivan & Reich, 2013). Good governance would promote
confidence among employees (Christl, Kopp & Riechert, 2017). It shall endow the council
members with a sense of responsibility and confidence to do what is right. It shall lead to
good and proper decision making within an organization. Not just that, it shall also assist the
organization meet their legislative obligations with compliance (Tricker & Tricker, 2015).
Good governance also fosters a thriving environment to make ethical decisions as everything
would be transparent to council members and every decision would be largely discussed and
considered before implementation. Apart from this, Mr. Kalanick needs to accept his
responsibilities as a leader and work on his attitude as well as leadership skills (Simon, 2017).
He could get in touch with management/corporate gurus like late Bill Campbell. The
experience could assist him in polishing the rough edges of his personality and help bridge
gap from his brazen personality to a responsible and mature CEO (Gilbert, 2016, p. 26).
Good leadership skills are sought by organizations and very important. People look to a
leader to inspire, motivate and build respect. Everyone who is an achiever cannot be a leader
and a leader believes in achieving with everyone together – by not creating fault lines but
rather build a progressive community. Apart from strategic thinking, to also organize and do
proper action-planning. This is important not only from perspective to achieving vision and
strategy of the organization itself but also do appropriate risk management so that
organization does not go wrong in their action.
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4. Conclusion
Thus, as is evident from the discussion of the case study, UBER has consistently presented
its unruly behaviour and most of it was a waterfall effect from the top management. Mr.
Kalanick has through his combative leadership, presented an example of ‘do what it takes'
attitude which was followed by his other execs in top management and eventually relayed to
people working underneath them. People working under such leadership feel stressed and are
always conscious. He could try to mould his leadership skills into a combination of
transactional and transformational to bring in positivity in the culture of the company. He
needs to implement strong control mechanism both for quality and feedback so that he can
have an overview of functioning within the organization and the brand image.
By bringing about a good leadership influence in his style, problems like sexism, male
dominance, unethical means to win over businesses or gain competitive advantage would be
curbed and Uber could reach its potential of a global organization favoured by potential
employees.
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5. Reference List
Journals
Cohen, P., Hahn, R., Hall, J., Levitt, S. and Metcalfe, R., 2016. Using big data to estimate
consumer surplus: The case of uber (No. w22627). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Cramer, J. and Krueger, A.B., 2016. Disruptive change in the taxi business: The case of
Uber. The American Economic Review, 106(5), pp.177-182.
Chen, L., Mislove, A. and Wilson, C., 2015, October. Peeking beneath the hood of uber.
In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Internet Measurement Conference (pp. 495-
508). ACM.
Christl, W., Kopp, K. and Riechert, P.U., 2017. CORPORATE SURVEILLANCE IN
EVERYDAY LIFE.
Castañer, X. and Kavadis, N., 2013. Does good governance prevent bad strategy? A study of
corporate governance, financial diversification, and value creation by French corporations,
2000–2006. Strategic Management Journal, 34(7), pp.863-876.
Dudley, G., Banister, D. and Schwanen, T., 2017. The Rise of Uber and Regulating the
Disruptive Innovator. The Political Quarterly.
Dumdum, U. R., Lowe, K. B., & Avolio, B. J. (2013). A meta-analysis of transformational
and transactional leadership correlates of effectiveness and satisfaction: An update and
extension. In Transformational and Charismatic Leadership: The Road Ahead 10th
Anniversary Edition (pp. 39-70). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Gilbert, G. (2016). Autonomy versus control: are you a manager or a leader?: feature-
leadership. HR Future, 2(Feb 2016), 26-27.
Kelly, S.G., Sullivan, J.E. and Reich, S.F., 2013. Regulatory uncertainty remains in energy
markets. New York Law Journal, 4.
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Kark, R., & Shamir, B. (2013). The dual effect of transformational leadership: Priming
relational and collective selves and further effects on followers. In Transformational and
Charismatic Leadership: The Road Ahead 10th Anniversary Edition (pp. 77-101). Emerald
Group Publishing Limited.
Rosenblat, A. and Stark, L., 2016. Algorithmic labor and information asymmetries: A case
study of Uber’s drivers.
Books
Doyle, J. C., Francis, B. A., & Tannenbaum, A. R. (2013). Feedback control theory. Courier
Corporation.
Simon, P., 2017. Analytics: The Agile Way. John Wiley & Sons.
Tricker, R.B. and Tricker, R.I., 2015. Corporate governance: Principles, policies, and
practices. Oxford University Press, USA.
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