Corporate Culture of Uber and The Change Management

Requirement

Question: Discuss on Human Resources Management.

Solution

Executive summary 

The aim of the paper is to understand different theories of change management and relate them to the corporate culture of Uber. Corporate culture and change management had a long term relation as cultural change forms the most challenging part of change management. Uber faced an issue in its corporate culture impacting its employees, customer and brand value. This is because the company faced many incident of harassment and discrimination in its working environment. Thus to deal with this problem Kurt Lewin Model of change can be used. This model helps in influencing the mangers to understand the need of change and take up change management in a systematic manner.

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Introduction

Uber is one of the well-known taxi service that operates over the globe for the people. It is basically known as a referral service through the customers can get in touch with the drivers and allows both the parties to know each other’s location. As known by the customers, Uber is just a taxi service; however, there is many more to the organization. The company operates like any other organization, has its own couture, values, operation and other important departments. It maintains a strong check before hiring a driver (Light, 2017). It is professional in its approach when it comes to the safety of its people and customers. The report discusses the role culture plays in an organization and issue faced by Uber it is culture. Further it analyzes the role of Change management in the organization and the way change management can solve the issue of culture in Uber. 

Discussion 

Change Management

Change is a process by which an organization tries to improve the performance of their business by identifying the issues in the organization and changing it for a better future. The change is actually bought by the employees of the organization as they are the active part of the business. However, bringing a change in a workplace is not an easy task and it requires many efforts and analysis. This process of preparing, supporting and implementing change is known as change management. Basically all organization goes through various process of change such as Individual change management, organizational change management and enterprise change management (Hayes, 2014). Moreover, there are also various theories suggested by various scholars about the process of managing change in the organization. 

Corporate Culture

The next important aspect of an organization is corporate culture. According to (Guiso, Sapienza & Zingales, 2015) corporate culture is the way in which the personals of the business such as the employees and higher bodies interact with each other to discuss something other than the business transactions. It is also a crucial factor in determining the development of an organization. This is because a friendly and suitable organizational culture is the best way organizations can influence their employees to perform their best. It has been further stated by (Davidson, Dey & Smith, 2015) that there are six components of corporate culture such as vision, values, practices, people, narrative and place. These components together helps in determining and defining the culture of an organization. It is important to define the culture of the organization because it accounts for 30 percent of the performance of the organization. It has been found that a culturally strong organization has always been performing well compared to those that does not follow an environment with corporate values. 

Role of Culture in Change Management 

Culture plays a critical role in change management and it is said to be one of the most important aspect of change management. Bringing change is an organization is one of the challenging factor of the business; however, managing cultural change is scarier.  This is because changing the operations and policies of the organization is an easy task compared to changing the behavior and believes of a person (Coleman, 2013). Thus, culture forms the most challenging factor of implement and managing change as it is not easy to just change the values of an organization so easily. In order to manage cultural change properly in an organization it is important that it influences its people first. This is because until and unless the people do not feel the change it is difficult to manage the acceptance of such change. According to the survey conducted by Strategyand (2013), it was seen that the survey responses shows a string and unbelievable correlation between change management and culture. It also showed that in order to be successful in the change it is necessary to take up a culture oriented change. However, the scenario in the rea world is way different from the result. This is because it is seen that managers does not give attention to organizational culture so much as compared to other factors. This is because only 53 percent have the view that culture does form an important part in the agenda of the business. Thus, the relation between culture and change management has gone through various critical views. It has also been argued by (Cameron & Green, 2015) that one who try to adjust within their culture and try to operate their business process accordingly are comparatively more successful than those that try to change their organization culture. 

Issues in Uber’s Corporate Culture

Similar to any other company, corporate culture also plays an important role in designing the performance of Uber. It is seen that Uber has always known to follow an aggressive and unrestrained corporate culture. There are many steps a person has to go through in order to get employed in Uber. This is done because the company wants the best person with best values to enter their company with their best efforts. Such culture has helped the company to become one of the biggest success stories in Silicon Valley. However, such kind of work culture has led to various issues in the company (Isaac, 2017). This is because the unrestrained work culture always led to fights and rough attitude of the workers towards each other. Moreover, there were also certain unacceptable problems caused to the customers. 
There are further stories as well that is seen regularly on the news that the culture problem in Uber has put a bad effect on the brand value and trust of the customers. Cultural issues has put down its reputation to a great extent as the company fully depends on its customer’s trust. Brand reputation is the most crucial factor of an organization. Gaining an exceptionally strong brand reputation helps the company to gain competitive advantage over others. However, when the company focuses on the financial performance and revenue will always result in customer dissatisfaction and under performance. Similar was the case of Uber as its main focus was only to earn profit and it failed to understand the importance of culture in its workplace (Light, 2017). There were log raged problems that came up from the people of the company as well as from the customers. Employees that worked in Uber always stated that they has faced a lot of issues due to the poor culture of the company such as sexual harassment, discrimination, exploitation and others. Such news about the company came out and has negative impact on the customers as they lost their trust on the drivers. This is because these comments made by past employees of Uber has an image on the people that the Uber does not value their employees and it is unsafe for women (Light, 2017). Thus, this shows that culture has a long term and detrimental impact on the performance and brand trust of the company. 

Role of Change Management to overcome the Issues

In order to deal with the problem in the corporate culture, Uber can only plan for change management. Change management is the only way it can deal with its deteriorating brand trust due to poor work culture. There are various steps they can take up to bring the change. Thus, change management is the only process one can deal with corporate culture (Fullan, 2014). There are various theories and models of change management that the company can use to bring an improvement in their culture. 
The Kurt Lewin Model of change is one of the most famous change model that can be implemented in the case of Uber to get the best result. The model emphasizes in threes stage theory of change such as unfreezing, changing and refreezing (Burke, 2017). The process helps in analyzing the issue carefully and bringing the in a systematic manner. Change that needs to be implemented in the corporate culture of Uber are:

  • Offer particular goals to the employees of Uber

  • Change the promotional policies of the company

  • Built up a flexible work place 

  • New policies will be applicable to all irrespective of gender and discrimination

  • Prohibit and create a zone of intolerance for any kind of harassment within and outside the workplace

  • Built an culturally diverse workforce

  • Develop new technology for the safety of the customers or travelers (CARSON & Conclusion 

From the above discussion it can be concluded that change is an important process in an organization and is crucial for its development. There are various aspects of change that an organization can bring in its environment; however, corporate culture is one of the most important aspect of change management. This is because a change in the work culture is the most challenging part in change management process. Implementing a change in business processes is easy; however, it is not easy to convince people to change their behavior. Uber faced an issue in its work culture that resulted in the downfall of its reputation. There was no strict cultural policy in the work environment of Uber which created a loss of harassment of women. This hampered the trust customers had on the company. Thus, in order to cope up with such problem a change is needed in its corporate culture. However, bringing a change in the culture is not easy as the upper managers of the company will not accept it. In order to make the process of change easy it is recommended to follow the Kurt Lewin Model of change. This model helps in bringing the change in a systematic wise.

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References 

  • Burke, W. W. (2017). Organization change: Theory and practice. Sage Publications.

  • Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2015). Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.

  • CARSON, B., & CAKEBREAD, C. (2017). These are the 47 things Uber has agreed to do to change its company's culture. Business Insider. Retrieved 22 February 2018, from https://www.businessinsider.in/These-are-the-47-things-Uber-has-agreed-to-do-to-change-its-companys-culture/articleshow/59152614.cms

  • Coleman, J. (2013). Six Components of a Great Corporate Culture. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 22 February 2018, from https://hbr.org/2013/05/six-components-of-culture

  • Davidson, R., Dey, A., & Smith, A. (2015). Executives'“off-the-job” behavior, corporate culture, and financial reporting risk. Journal of Financial Economics, 117(1), 5-28.

  • Fullan, M. (2014). Leading in a culture of change personal action guide and workbook. John Wiley & Sons.

  • Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2015). The value of corporate culture. Journal of Financial Economics, 117(1), 60-76.

  • Hayes, J. (2014). The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Isaac, M. (2017). Inside Uber’s Aggressive, Unrestrained Workplace Culture. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 22 February 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-workplace-culture.html

  • Light, L. (2017). Uber’s problems show brand trust is linked to a company’s culture. NY Daily News. Retrieved 22 February 2018, from http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/uber-problems-show-brand-trust-linked-company-culture-article-1.3326893

  • strategyand. (2018). The culture and change management survey | PwC’s Strategy&. Strategyand.pwc.com. Retrieved 22 February 2018, from https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/global/home/what_we_do/services/ocl/culture-and-change

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