ANALYSIS ON CRITICAL ISSUES RELATED TO BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT CONTEXT OF UBER TECHNOLOGIES INC. Business organizations is an individual or a group of that combine to attain certain commercial goals which are operating in our society. Since they are all directly connected to the people, due to which we face and experience the situations influenced by such business organization and its management decisions. All sizes of business organizations play a key role in reinforcing and prolonging the country’s economy. It is affected by both internal and external limitations and demands. Based on these facts this essay will discuss critical issues related to business and management context of Uber. (Mylonas, 2007) Uber is a network of transportation company which was originally found in San Francisco, California in 2009. It was formerly called Ubercab. By late 2015, it was estimated Uber to be worth US$ 62.5 billion (Should Uber be made legal throughout Australia?, 2016). Currently it is operating in 577 cities around the globe (Uber Cities Worldwide, 2017). In case of Australia, Uber is activated in 18 cities around the country which has created thousands of new jobs in Australia with more than one million registered users. The rider is charged based on the time and distance of a ride and its fares are based on a dynamic pricing model. Rider have choice of paying to Uber driver by cash or by a card. The price might be increasing depending upon the increasing in demand in certain areas where there are not many Uber drivers available. (Uber: Help, 2016) This essay will discuss about the critical issues related to business and management context of Uber. It also analyzes the contextual internal and external factors to the business that might affect to the whole organization. This essay also discusses different theories gathered from literature reviews and their applications to analyze the issues. According to Fortune Tech, Uber was facing some of the biggest legal problems. Under the employment law, Uber drivers do not enjoy the rights and cure of being considered as “employees”. It should treat their drivers as an employee paying them a minimum wage and a holiday pay. The case was registered to an employment board in July 2016 by two of the Uber drivers saying the briskly enlarging app that permits riders to book and pay for taxi by their smart phones which was happening unlawfully by not giving them certain rights and treating them as self-employed. (Fortune Tech, 2016) Self-driving driving car operated by Uber is leading to the accidents. One of the self-driving car was crashed in Arizona, however there was no severe injuries. (Liptak, 2017) After the accident, Uber suspended self-driving car. Although this was not the very first time when self-driving cars has been crashed, a driver of Tesla Motors Inc was killed when a car was with an auto mode collide with the truck in Willington, Florida in 2016 (CNBC, 2017). This is the internal factor that affects the organization as it happened because of the management team who tried to introduce self-driving technology but it was suspended after the incident. Sometimes Uber server goes down due to which passengers should suffer a lot. If the server goes down in the mean time when passenger wants it in emergency, they might not be using it from another time. Thus, to overcome this issue Uber should be focusing on improving its server problems. Uber has so many safety issues which are rising in some cities. In 2014, one of the New Delhi’s woman charged the Uber’s driver of raping her, due to which the Indian capital banned taxi-booking service in that city while company itself suspended its operations in that city. The New Delhi’s case is not only the safety issue that Uber is facing it has the several other incidents involving kidnapping, sexual harassment and sexual assault. In Chicago, Uber driver was accused of a sexual assault in the same year. Immediately after the incident thee driver was expelled from the Uber platform. Uber driver was arrested of involving in kidnaping a drunk passenger and taking her to the hotel for the sexual assault. In addition, drivers are involving in criminal activities with the passengers. (Picchi, 2014). There are also some privacy concerns with the Uber, it records from where the customer take the taxi and it also record that where he/she goes with it. Which may lead to the leaking of personal privacy to others. Uber has a dynamic pricing model which is called “Surge pricing” which will make cost increasing with respect to demand. Uber increased fare even during disaster, it doubled the price when Hurricane Sandy strike New York which leads in gathering a lot of criticism from mass (Bosker, 2012). In 2014, during the Sydney crisis hostage the fares were hiked four times to the normal charges. To take the advantage of dynamic pricing more drivers got their cars and the number of vehicles available got tripled. Initially Uber was defending it but later it come up with the apology and refunded all the surcharges. (Lapowsky, 2015) In any organization, there are many contextual factors that may be external or internal environment factors which will have direct or indirect impact on business context of the organization. There are two analytic tools to analyze such factors, they are: SWOT analysis and PESTLE analysis (Wright, 2012). The major aim of the SWOT analysis is to provide all the list of external and internal environment as Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats for the organizational strategies. In case of Uber, its strength could be its service spreading all over the world just by using a app. It is a more convenient and easier way to reach the desired destination. It is a very well recognized brand and has a very little competition with quite low operational cost. On the other hand, Uber has many weakness; its communication and the relationship with the driver is poor. Hence, we could expect that the loyalty between drivers and Uber is very low which may result in the loss of its drivers. It is considered that drivers do not earn much benefit as the cost of maintenance is very high. Incentive to remain with Uber is low as there is no bonding between the customers and company. Opportunity for Uber could be, it can utilize the big and new markets in the countries like India where getting taxi is difficult as well as high cost. With the low profit margins drivers are not happy which is a threat of bad publicity. This might discourage the new drivers joining the Uber. (Swot Analysis for Uber, 2015) PESTLE on the other hand is an analytical tool which aims to identify all the external factors such as political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental. Uber is affected with these factors which are external such as being an international brand it might be affected by the country’s government and its political environment. The policy of paying tax might be getting higher which will eventually affect its economy. It was facing so many legal issues related to its drivers. Among social factor, Uber has no connection with the customers which could affect the incentive of being with Uber again. The company should improve their technology so that the customer will not be affected in server which in turn is the loss of company. After discussing the issues associated with the Uber there comes the risk troubling the company. There are various risks which confront the organization. Due to the involvement of several sexual harassment, sexual assault, kidnapping by Uber drivers to female customers as well some involving in criminal activities, company’s image is going down resulting in risk of downsizing of an organization. However, they might have taken the action against the assaulter it will not completely diminish its risk specially to female customers. The company was also criticized for increasing its fare during some natural hazards as well as in the increment of demand. To overcome the risk of downsizing, company apologized refunded the surcharges. Those strategies in the moment of crisis are the component of an organizational management. (Beasley, 2005) The Organization and Business practices by the company shows the behavior and important systems within the organization which aid in dividing the performance. The company’s poor performance to operate it by neglecting the importance of the connection between consumer and the company might be a threat to lose it market value. Uber being the multinational brand US might have to confront in international market due to the result of its antipathetic image with the decreasing confidence of stakeholders. (Delmotte, 2012) The functions of business firms involve operations, human resources, finance and marketing. These are the functional factors in the company which helps to achieve the organizational goals (tutor2u, 2015). In Uber with the help of human resource, finance and marketing all over the world it has operated significantly with the strong organizational strategy to overcome the criticism. Based on above analysis of the different issues associated with Uber, it is seen that how important it is to analyze the environmental factors as well as risk troubling the firm and reduce them. To maintain its success as well as getting social factor rebuilding its safety concerns and to retain its customers the company should change its organizational policy of connecting with the customers. The company should have very good communication with drivers and make them feel that they are the part of an organization and pay them higher so that the relationship between company and drivers improves which will eventually become the factor of succeeding the company. References Beasley, M. S. (2005). Enterprise risk management: An empirical analysis of factors associated with the extent of implementation. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 521-531. Bosker, B. (2012). "Uber Rethinks New York 'Surge Pricing,' But Doubles Driver Pay. Retrieved from The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/uber-new-york-driver-pay_n_2051971 CNBC. (2017, March 26). Retrieved from Uber suspends self-driving car program after Arizona crash: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/26/uber-self-driving-car-arizona-crash-suspended.html Delmotte, J. (2012). Toward an assessment of perceived HRM system strength: scale development and validation. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 1481-1506. Fortune Tech. (2016, October 29). Retrieved from Here’s Where Uber Is Facing Some of Its Biggest Legal Problems : http://fortune.com/2016/10/28/uber-legal-lawsuits/ Lapowsky, I. (2015). What Uber's Sydney Surge Pricing Debacle Says About its Public Image. Retrieved from Weired Magazine: https://www.wired.com/2014/12/uber-surge-sydney/ Liptak, A. (2017, March 25). One of Uber’s self-driving cars just crashed in Arizona. Retrieved from The Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/25/15058978/uber-self-driving-car-crash-arizona Mylonas, A. (2007). Business organisation and management for Queensland. South Yarra, Vic.: Macmillan Education Australia. Picchi, A. (2014). The rising safety issues that could throttle Uber. Retrieved from CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-rising-safety-issues-that-could-throttle-uber/ Should Uber be made legal throughout Australia? (2016). Retrieved from Uber-Echo-Online-Issue-Outline: https://learn.stleonards.vic.edu.au/debating/files/2013/01/Uber-Echo-Online-Issue-Outline.pdf Swot Analysis for Uber. (2015, March 11). Retrieved from PESTLE Analysis: http://pestleanalysis.com/swot-analysis-for-uber/ tutor2u. (2015). Retrieved from Functions in a Business (GSCE): https://www.tutor2u.net/business/reference/functions-in-a-business Uber Cities Worldwide. (2017). Retrieved from Uber Technologies Inc.: https://www.uber.com/en-AU/our-story/ Uber: Help. (2016). Retrieved from What is dynamic pricing?: https://help.uber.com/h/34212e8b-d69a-4d8a-a923-095d3075b487 Wright, R. P. (2012). How Useful Are the Strategic Tools We Teach in Business Schools? Journal of Management Studies, 92-125.