Pros And Cons Of Usage Uber

Introduction

Uber’s mission is to help people going to different places easily, as they indicate “We ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion”. Uber Technologies Inc. is an American multinational company that provides ridesharing, ride-hailing, food delivery, …etc. The story of Uber began in December 2008 in, Paris where Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, the founders of Uber, found themselves stuck in Paris in a snowy evening and unable to find a taxi to drive them back home.

In March 2009, they developed an application to help people to get a ride in San Francisco. Then, they kept developing the application and adding new features to it till it became Uber as we know it now. The name Uber came from the German word ‘Über’ meaning ‘above all the rest. The co-founders of Uber are Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp. Travis Kalanick was the CEO of Uber till 2017 when he resigned but he remained a member of the board till he resigned from the board in December 2019 to concentrate on the new business he founded and philanthropic endeavors. Garrett Camp gave up his position as a board director and switched to a board observer to focus on product strategy.

Body

A. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Uber

Dara Khosrowshahi, the current CEO of Uber, was born in Iran in 1969. When he was 9, he left Iran with his family because of the Iranian revolution and went to Tarrytown, New York. Therefore, he advocated the refugees in crisis around the world. He had his bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Brown University. He started working as an analyst at the investment bank Allen & Company. He also became the chief financial officer (CFO) at Diller’s IAC, which firstly purchased Expedia. When Expedia spun off from it, Dara was promoted as the CEO of Expedia. It was one of the most positions he had as he grew in one of the largest online travel companies in the world. At the end of 2017, he started working as the CEO of Uber till now.

In the span of 2020, one of the major managerial roles he had is disturbance handling (one of the decisional roles), since, in the current circumferences of the COVID-19 pandemic with the huge loss of more than 80% of the company revenues, he decided after consulting with the board to lay off more than 3000 employees, sending them why they took such a decision, and give them strong benefits, healthcare coverage, and alumni talent directory. They promised that they will also help people with special situations a bit differently. The HR will send an e-mail to every one of them to construct a meeting to figure out their situation to give them any help they need. And the decision approval or making in this difficult situation proves that he is also a resource allocator (one of the decisional roles).

He uses a democratic-leading style while being a CEO in Uber, as when he first started working in Uber in 2017, he spent the first two weeks talking to people; he met the drivers, women engineers, and the customer support line staff.

Jessica Bryndza, the global director of people experiences and employer brand in Uber, said about Khosrowshahi that he came to listen to all people, and he did not come in gun blazing, to indicate that he is a leader that listens before making decisions. He also hired the first chief diversity and inclusion officer, Bo Young Lee, and its first chief operating officer, Barney Harford. In contrary with the former CEO, Kalanick, as he reported that he did not want to share duties in running the company.

B. Social Responsibilities of Uber

Uber’s commitment of 10 million free rides and deliveries for healthcare workers, seniors, and people in need with no charges is one of the most important social initiatives Uber provided during the current COVID-19 pandemic. They are also ready for more help for any organization or government as they can submit a request to the company. They also support the frontline healthcare workers with transportation and free meals. Currently, they are partnering with 1122SEIU, one of the largest healthcare unions in the US, to help the frontline healthcare workers that are working in areas that are most affected by the pandemic.

Uber did an effort to make the most eco-friendly solutions to satisfy their customers. They give the customer the choice of hybrid, electric, or traditional cars. They also support ridesharing with UberPool and Pool Express so that fewer cars will be used, and that will reduce the carbon emissions in the air. But that does not mean that it is totally eco-friendly (it does not follow the dark green approach), since it has better things to do, such as using only hybrid or electric cars, and not giving the customer the choice of the traditional cars. But that will reduce their profits since hybrid and electric cars are not widely used.

Therefore, Uber is employing the market approach, as it tries only to satisfy the customers.

The initiatives that Uber did and still doing during the pandemic have not had too

many positive impacts till now, as Uber has lost about 80% of its profits. But in the long-term, that may help Uber to have a better reputation of helping people, and more people will use Uber.

C. Control Process

The purpose of the control process is to evaluate the organization’s performance and solves any problems or deviations that could happen to it. Thus, that guarantees the organization is following its plan and furthering its goals. The best information used to measure performance in Uber is Organizational Effectiveness, since Uber may have the productivity it needs, but it may have a lot of customer complaints, or low reviews for many drivers, and that would cause a reduction in the productivity with time if these things were not taken into consideration. Hence, such matrices should be essential while measuring the performance, and how much Uber is achieving its goal and mission.

D. Value Chain and Value Chain Management

The value chain is the whole series of the work activities of the organization that add value at each step from raw materials to the final product. There are no obstacles in the value chain management of Uber since the leader is listening to the others (the CEO of Uber, Dara), he is eager to take some risks to change the current situation, and there is security in the information of the customers and the drivers, since when you call the driver, a virtual number will be displayed, and the information of the person who did the review is not displayed.

In addition, everyone in Uber respects and trusts each other’s different cultures in

gender, religion, color, and many other different aspects. They also did not lose any of the value chain components, and they always do their best to satisfy the customers and the drivers.

E. Global Teams in Uber

As mentioned before, Uber has a team of different cultures. They are not employing talented applicants regardless of their culture, but also, they choose the ones who will respect the other employees of different cultures and be open to working with them. The teams in Uber may have mixed cultures and not necessarily of a similar culture as many organizations have different cultures, but are divided into similar-culture teams.

Conclusion

In my opinion, Uber is working fine in the aspects of the organizational culture and how the company accepts different cultures, the cooperating teams and how they work with each other with love and respect, their professional CEO and how he handles difficult situations, and how he listens and supports the employees. But they may change the green approach they are employing as they may have their own hybrid or electric cars to be used in Uber to reduce the air pollution instead of leaving the driver to use his own eco-friendly or non-eco-friendly car.