Uber Management

Founded in 2009, Uber a peer to peer ride sharing, cab, and food delivery company has emerged as one of the largest transportation network business of the 21stcentury. The private entity which was established by Travis Kalanick and Garret Camp has become prominent in the sharing economy. The American multinational uses the online platform to connect riders with local drivers via the Uber app. Users hail the car using their smartphones after installing the app Driven by service excellence and convenience the invention of the entity proved to be an effective alternative to traditional taxis and poorly organized public transportation system in several locations across the world. Currently, the company serves in over 780 metropolitan areas across the globe. Uber offers a high level of customer service than traditional cab companies due to its culture of employing drivers with decorum. Mysteriously despite owning no vehicles, Uber has become the world's largest taxi company with a valuation of $60 billion. In this paper, we analyze seven management aspects that have enabled Uber to become successful.

Being an entity that overly relies on technology, innovation forms an essential element of Uber's business model due to its dynamic nature. The company which is best known for ride-hailing business has been pursuing broader innovations to harness its continuity and success. Since its inception, Uber has been engaged in numerous inventions which have fostered the quality of their services and continues to espouse many more. The recent innovation is its attempt to introduce self-driving cars to be among its fleet of vehicles. The company piloted the use of these vehicles in Pittsburg in August 2016 when it allowed people to summon self-driving cars from their phones (FastCompany, 2017). In the same year, the company which had just acquired Silicon Valley a startup in Otto successfully rode a self-driving truck to deliver 50,000

cans of Budweiser an instance that demonstrated the viability of autonomous trucking offering the company an opportunity also to pursue the delivery of goods business.

Human resource plays a vital role in harnessing the success of an entity since their skills and knowledge ascertains the level of success an entity will attain. Ideally, the human resource management is a critical department in any company since it is obligated with effective management of workers so that they aid the entity in attaining its objectives and more so attaining competitive advantage. Human resource management at Uber has not been functioning properly as the company has been facing negative publicity over its pervasive culture. In an article written by Boudreau in 2017 Uber has been practicing disturbing and potentially illegal human resource managerial activities which have been detrimental to its reputation. Apparently, the company was alleged to tolerate instances of sexual harassment, bullying, discrimination, retaliation among other harmful activities hence immensely failed to manage individual behavior of its employees. The company, however, began to take necessary actions including reprimanding and firing perpetrators after the matter came to the public limelight.

Uber's tremendous success can be linked to the aggressiveness that its founders have depicted over the years. The company's incredible growth which had at some point been overshadowed by a series of scandals seemingly related to the leadership of its founder and the culture he represented and instilled throughout the company has been enhanced by an occupation of talented and skilled leaders in the entity' s leadership position. The rise of Frances Frei and Dara Khosrowshahi to the company's CEO position have revamped its leadership practices and culture harnessing the entity's potential to succeed through espousing new cultural norms (Khosrowshahi, 2017). Being an entity operating in the gig economy Uber deploys distinctive mechanisms to motivate the drivers who are their major employees. The company has been

lobbying for employee inputs when deciding on the entity's critical matters. Another incentive that Uber provides is providing the drivers with areas where the demand for services is high through a driver's app which grants them real-time visibility. In an article written by Scheiber in 2017 the company has also been deploying distinct mechanisms to keep their drivers engaged for instance the company uses psychological tactics that trick drivers into working longer and sending encouragement popups to the drivers.

Undoubtedly the level of excellence in service delivery attained by Uber is an indicator that the company's quality management practices have been effective. Quality management is a business philosophy that champions the idea of an entity's long-term success by fostering customer satisfaction. The company which is trusted by millions of transporters has over the years been committed to harnessing the safety of its customers. Uber technology makes it possible to focus on safety for the drivers and riders before, during and after every trip. The corporation provides a platform for the rider to provide feedback which is used to evaluate the rating of its services and monitor the overall quality level of its services (Collomb, 2017).

Communication plays a central role in all facades of a business. It ensures an effective exchange of information among various parties in and outside the company but also plays an important role in the development of an organization (Guffey & Loewy, 2012). Uber espouses distinct methods of organizational communication to interact with the public and its employees. The company which has been entangled with many crises utilizes its newsroom article and official press releases to respond to the events (Dypiangco, 2017). The company uses outdated methods to communicate with drivers which it considers as partners. The company does a print publication to relate to this group which is rarely updated.

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