Case Study Of UBER Travis Kalanick’s Rollercoaster Reign -Sample

Question: Discuss about the UBER Travis Kalanicks Rollercoaster Reign. Answer: Introduction Post going through case study, UBER Travis Kalanicks 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, ofmanagement 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 organizations 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 Ubers context. Finally, the report shall quickly provide some recommendations that could be immediately be adopted by UBER to turn over a new leaf. The Discussion The case study UBER Travis Kalanicks 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 self-purpose fulfillment. UBERs 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 subordinat es 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 leadership (Kark Shamir, 2013, p.82). He influenced not only Apple but inspired aspiring leaders alike. 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 hismanagement 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 medi cal 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. 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 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 APPLEs 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. 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 responsibilitie s 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. 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. References 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. 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