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Uber Article Review
Sheelah Kolhatkar’s article ‘Uber’s Optimistic Ouster’ mainly focuses on the various ethical issues that the recently formed tech giant has had to deal with in the last couple of years. The article makes known of the company’s illustrious success and what its top officials have had to do in order to gain that success. A general theme of disobedience to the norms of society can be seen in the various activities undertaken by some of the company’s top officials. The article used a recent threat from some of the company’s biggest investors to take serious action for the lack of high moral standards depicted by the Uber’s top officials. The threats came as a reaction to a sexual harassment complaint that was raised by a female engineer who had been enrolled in the company’s workforce.
The pair of investors who were willing to cause a major overhaul in the company’s leadership had been gutted by a series of ethical issues that had emerged about the company. Kolhatkar indicates that the company’s former Chief Executive Officer, Travis Kalanick had used the company’s ambitions as an excuse to break the law. Apparently, Kalanick had previously resigned from his role as the leader of the company after a number of investors demanded that he does so. This came after the company got into numerous scandals involving the Chief Executive Officer. Kalanick was also ousted because of the financial strategies he had implemented in the company.

In the article, Kolhatkar indicates that Uber had been losing hundreds of millions of dollars because of the pursuit of revenue generation platforms that were not fruitful for the company. The former Chief Executive Officer’s conduct threatened to reduce the company’s valuation and kill its reputation as one of the fastest growing companies in global economics (Kolhatkar 1).
Travis Kalanick had also indulged in some questionable behavior on other occasions. The report highlights that he once scolded an Uber driver with the use of extremely vulgar language. The company has been reported to get into numerous legal tussles with local city authorities over regulations. Apparently, the company used its unorthodox operational structure to evade some regulations established to control the conduct of public service vehicle operators. There article also mentioned a number of issues that the company has had to deal with because of small competitors that have proved to be stubborn in various cities across the globe. The implications of the company’s numerous ethical issues were perhaps climaxed when its competitor, Sidecar’s Chief Executive Officer and founder, Sunil Paul started a campaign geared towards encouraging the company’s customers to uninstall its mobile application from their cellphones. It is believed that the Delete Uber Campaign led to the loss of over five hundred thousand customers for the tech giant.
Generally, some of Uber’s top officials have been using the company’s ambitions as a curtain to conceal the indecent acts that they have been doing to forge the company’s success. They held a vague notion that if the company had followed the laid down rules and regulations, it probably would not have reached where it currently is. It is true that the company experienced success by playing around the rules and acting in a way that would suit its interests. However, overindulgence in such acts threatened to jeopardize its public image which is a key determiner of the company’s profitability.
Works Cited
Kolhatkar, Sheelah. “Uber’S Opportunistic Ouster”. The New Yorker, 2017, p. 1. Accessed 12 Mar 2018.