ASSIGNMENT 1: SOCIAL PERFORMANCE OF ORGANIZATIONS

Assignment 1: Social performance of organizations

Your Name (First M. Last)

School or Institution Name (University at Place or Town, State)

Uber

Nature:

Uber is one of the famous transportation network companies. It’s headquarter is in San Francisco, California. It is a leading and emerging company that is facilitating people by providing them comfortable journey. Nature of uber could be better understood by saying it a kind of online cab system that would provide the passengers easy, comfortable and cheap traveling (Jin,et,al,2019). By nature, it is a technology-based platform, as people have to install the uber app for using the service provided by this company. Technology is the backbone of this company as one is going to be in touch with his driver only through smartphone.

Structure of uber:

For understanding the structure uber it is essential to know that its head office is operating in San Francisco. Initially, it started operating in American only but with the advancement time and after getting success, this company that was just operating in U.S, started operating in other countries as well and now it is operating in 785 metropolitan areas in various countries. Its structure includes platforms that could be accessed by approaching to its websites and by installing the uber app that would bring the customer in touch with the company (Sun,et,al,2018). After this, the request for the ride would be forwarded to the drivers that would be near to the applicant’s location who has requested for availing the uber service. There are thousand are vehicles that are registered on uber. Uber comes in the list of very few companies that value more than $70 billion.

Types of services that uber offers:

There are different types of services that uber offers for facilitating its users and these services are listed below:

Ridesharing:

In this service, a ride is going to be shared between the two passengers and it is going to be done by the driver and both the passengers would know about this sharing.

Riding services:

This is one of the most important services from which this company is generating its revenue. In this service, the rider who wants to travel, sends a request and gets in touch with the driver, simply by putting his/her destination in the "where to" box after installing the uber app in his/her smartphone.

Bike riding:

In this service, a bike is being used for short traveling within the cities.

Food delivery:

Another appealing service that has been introduced by this company is the food delivery service. In this service, people can order whatever they want to eat, and that ordered food would be with them.

Factors affecting uber’s success:

This fact cannot be denied that there are many factors when it comes to the success of a company, a company cannot be seen as something picture perfect as there would be some weak areas that become a hurdle in the way of success of a company. Likewise, it could be seen that many issues could be observed regarding Uber. Though many factors are reducing the speed of progress of uber but two elements that has become a hurdle in its success are listed below:

It has been seen that uber is not much safe ride when it comes to the female passengers. It has been seen that there are many cases of sexual harassment reported by the female passengers also these females passenger contact information has been seen misused by the uber executives. Drivers can also trace and have a passenger's location that also raised serious privacy concerns.

Another factor that is affecting uber’s success is the fake rides that used to be sent from its competitor Lyft for cutting the profit of this company.

Suggestions to the stakeholders for influencing financial improvements

There are two types of stakeholders that usually a company has. The primary stakeholders involve investors, employees, suppliers, and customers and following are the five suggestions that would add a lot in the financial performance of uber.

Employee relations:

There are various ways by which the stakeholders can improve the financial condition of uber as there are few areas that need more attention for coping with the issues that are creating problems on its way to success. One of the main way by adopting which the stakeholders can influence the financial condition of uber is that the stakeholders should try to resolve the issues that customers are having because of the notorious code of conduct of uber drivers (Malos,et,al,2018). There should be a healthy relationship among the employers, employees and the customers as it is going to help all the three parties that are being connected through uber. The employee should take the drivers in confidence and should treat them well as it would help in sustaining the drivers who quite uber within a few weeks or months.

Commissions and bonus:

Increasing bonuses and commissions of the drivers would be another way through which the stakeholders could influence the financial improvements. Uber could do much better than it is doing today, but some issues need to be resolve timely. Bonuses and commissions could be a positive step that stakeholders could take for realizing the employees that they matter also for the success of this business.

Increasing the cancellation time:

Though Uber is running successfully not only in America but in other parts of the world as well but just because of minor management errors and emergence of new online transport service threats it’s continuously. There are other competitors nowadays in this market for uber such Lyft who has emerged as a strong competitor for uber, and is making policies that are clashing with that of uber's policies. Lyft is providing more cancellation time than uber, so uber stakeholders should consider this point as well because customers always prefer a company who would first think about customer’s benefit and this is what lyft is doing. Uber is having less cancellation time and start charging money to the customer; that's why people are getting more attracted towards lyft nowadays.

Resolve the privacy concerns of customers:

There have been reported many complaints against the privacy concerns to uber, specifically about the location of the customer, there has been raised severe concerns. As the competition in the online transport business is getting tough, it is a golden chance for Uber to attract its customers again by finding out possible ways of resolving customer’s privacy concerns. Uber stakeholders should make the best use of the latest technology for devising the ways how uber could provide its services to people without disturbing and knowing much about them.

Taking notice of misconduct complaints:

Another major issue that uber is facing is that there many reports about the misconduct of the Uber drivers. Many customers have complained that their drivers do not have any business ethics or realization of their social responsibility. Especially in case of females, there have been reported many cases of sexual harassment, so stakeholders should work on improving Uber's reputation by charging and taking serious actions against those drivers, about whom there are complaints about misconduct or sexual harassment.

Social responsibility and controversy:

Uber is doing great business in its field and has an outstanding business model, but there is a social responsibility concern that this company deals with. Not only the passengers are being exploited of their rights many times but also the drivers who work for Uber are not treated well, and this has become one of the main concern regarding social responsibility that uber is facing. It should be the concern of uber to take care of the social responsibility. It should own its employees who are its main source for generating good revenue. There is a need for uber to work a little more on social responsibility. Uber should value its driver, as its customers are valuable for it. There have been seen many controversial issues regarding the social responsibility that this company fails to fulfill (MacEachen,et,al,2018). It is having a tough time as many other companies are emerging in this field and uber is focusing more on other ways how to attract more and more drivers. Uber is just ignoring the fact that other companies that are emerging in this field are not violating social responsibilities like Uber and are valuing their drivers.

There has been seen many controversies where there are solid pieces of evidence that uber is neglecting the term social responsibility and focusing more on how to have a strong hold in the market where there have come strong competitors like Lyft. Drivers should be facilitated by providing them all the possible benefits that they deserve. It is the social responsibility of Uber to take in confidence the drivers first if it wants to rule the market. There have been seen many problems that uber drivers face such as safety issues, challenges for meeting customer’s expectations, but still they try to satisfy the customer, but in turn, there get a very little cut even after driving for many hours. Sometimes they also have to face awkward situations where they are humiliated by some rude and arrogant customers but still they have a fear of being reported by those customers as they are not even being given the right to report a complaint against a customer, so as a whole it could be said that drivers should be treated as human and there comes some social responsibility on uber for safeguarding its driver’s rights.

References:

Jin, S. T., Kong, H., & Sui, D. Z. (2019). Uber, Public Transit, and Urban Transportation Equity: A Case Study in New York City. The Professional Geographer, 1-16.

Sun, H., Hu, S., McIntosh, S., & Cao, Y. (2018). Big data trip classification on the New York City taxi and Uber sensor network. Journal of Internet Technology, 19(2), 591-598.

Malos, S., Lester, G. V., & Virick, M. (2018). Uber Drivers and Employment Status in the Gig Economy: Should Corporate Social Responsibility Tip the Scales?. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 30(4), 239-251.

MacEachern, E., Musson, E. R., Bartel, E., Carriere, J., Meyer, S. B., Varatharajan, S., ... & Saunders, R. (2018). 285 The sharing economy: hazards of being an Uber driver.