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Introduction (18)
How Uber Manages Crises
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Introduction
Uber Technologies Inc., formerly known as UberCab, was founded by Travis Kalanick, Oscar Salazar, and Garret Camp in March 2009. Uber’s current valuation stands at 129 billion dollars. Uber headquarters are located in San Francisco in the U.S.A. Some of its major investors include Toyota Motor Corporation, Tencent Holdings, and SoftBank Vision Fund. In terms of structure, Uber has a pool of 3.9 million drivers across the world. The number is expected to grow annually owing to increased registrations that take place today. Noteworthy, Uber has operations in 63 countries and over 700 cities. This reveals that Uber is a service provider that is loved and globally accepted. Statistics reveal that in 2019, Uber Technologies had 26, 900 employees and that compared to women, men earn 7% more earnings (Jeon, Lee, & Jeong, 2020). Male drivers drive on average 2.5% faster which enables them to serve more clients. Additionally, female drivers below 65 years received more tips than men. Over the years, Uber has faced many disruptive challenges and fought many rivals transforming the company from a black-ca service to an empire for self-driving cars and food delivery. In the face of disasters such as the ongoing pandemic, Uber technologies have shifted gear to sustain their relevance in the global economy and international trade. The purpose of this essay is to highlight the challenges and ethical issues experienced by Uber. It further proposes innovative policies and strategies to address the challenges and strategies that can be employed in achieving an equitable, cross-cultural, and multicultural work environment.
Issues and Challenges
Although both the Uber drivers and clients face challenges, there are hardly any downsides for customers. One of the greatest challenges facing the industry is safety concerns. This is an issue because, in many states and cities with lax transport industry regulations, average citizens can easily infiltrate the system as service providers. Although it has a positive impact on the number of drivers, there is no way to guarantee that the drivers will maintain professionalism and safety. Another issue is surge pricing, which controls free markets by lowering and increasing pricing based on demand. This hurts customers as sometimes the fare could triple or double during peak hours. Low fares also impact negatively on drivers due to low earnings. In cities like New York, drivers are encouraged to get luxury cars and the latest models to keep with their customers’ needs (Kovoor-Misra, 2019). Price competition has had a negative impact on the transport industry. This has to do with the fact that Uber and other e-hail taxi services are always competing to provide the cheapest service. Further, they are also in competition with traditional. Another challenge facing the Uber business is the lack of accessibility features for people with disabilities. In some countries, car hire companies are mandated by the law to have a given number of wheelchair accessible vans for use. This is not always the case as most drivers don’t have access to the laws making it difficult to comply with the law.
Ethical Challenges
Over the past few years, Uber has found itself at the center of unethical scandals ranging from sexual assault, sabotage, the issue of multi-tasking, and privacy (Maheshwari, 2017). There have been cases of customers raising sexual assault accusations against Uber drivers. This is because the process of bringing drivers on has been negligent. The Word is, Uber does not meet with drivers before approving their applications. It is expected that such a multi-billion company can afford to run background checks on their drivers as it is the only way to ensure clients’ safety. Further, Uber has been found to employ techniques of sabotage against their competitors to ensure they remain in business. Several Uber drivers were found to request rides from Lyft, their main competitor, only to cancel them. This causes the Lyft drivers to waste gas and have low availability leading customers to request Ubers instead. The fact that Uber bases its operations on using GPS to reach potential clients presents a drawback from a safety perspective. This is because drivers have to keep checking their mobile drivers while driving, increasing the chances of causing accidents. Uber has also been accused of disregarding its clients’ privacy as it has an application used in tracking their customers’ location.
Proposed Innovative Solutions
One of the strategies Uber can employ to avoid scandals is putting safeguards in place. Uber has been accused of sexual violations and drivers cheating their clients. While some of the allegations were true they lead to negative implications on the company’s brand. Putting sufficient safeguards provides a way of nullifying the negative publicity that faces them. Another strategy would be to offer its employees more flexible schedules to attract more people in need of additional income streams (Wong, J2017). Flexibility ensures Uber’s growth. Another strategy is adjusting its income claims by reducing commission. Currently, Uber collects commissions ranging from 20%-28% of earnings. Additionally, Uber should develop a grievance handling and sexual harassment policy in its company to help address cases of sexual harassment against its customers. Implementation of such a policy can help address the issue and improve their brand image. To maximize profits, Uber must recognize the changing nature of its business by diversifying its services. Recently, Uber has started leveraging technology for optimal driver allocation and cab bookings. Moreover, with the current situation, Uber should continue to scale up alternative businesses, including Uber Eats and Uber Freight.
Strategies of Implementing an Equitable, Cross-cultural and Multi-cultural Environment.
Uber Technologies recognizes that having inclusive and diverse teams is their greatest asset. It drives innovation which provides them with a competitive advantage. Uber technologies have doubled its commitment to create a work environment where people from all backgrounds can thrive and function. One of the strategies which Uber can employ is increasing the representation of underrepresented groups, including women. This can be achieved by increasing women workforce to 50%, increasing women’s representation in technology and leadership positions. A multi-cultural environment must consider not only race and gender but also sexual orientation. This means including people who identify as LGBTI in the workforce to ensure a diverse and equitable workforce.
Conclusion
Uber remains to be one of the most renowned and successful businesses of the 21st century. With operations in over 63 countries, Uber has managed to take over the ridesharing business by storm. Over the years, Uber has faced many disruptive challenges and fought many rivals transforming the company from a black-ca service to an empire for self-driving cars and food delivery. In the face of disasters such as the ongoing pandemic, Uber technologies have shifted gear to sustain their relevance in the global economy and international trade. It has found itself in the middle of scandals ranging from sexual harassment, safety concerns for clients, inaccessibility features and surge in prices. To address these problems, Uber Technologies must realize the need to keep their employees happy, reduce commissions, run background checks on drivers, and have safeguards.
References
Jeon, M. M., Lee, S., & Jeong, M. (2020). Perceived corporate social responsibility and customers’ behaviors in the ridesharing service industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 84, 102341.
Kovoor-Misra, S. (2019). Crisis management: Resilience and change. SAGE Publications.
Maheshwari, N. (2017). Uber taxi cab-handling crisis communication. Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies.
Wong, J. C. (2017). Uber concealed massive hack that exposed data of 57m users and drivers. The Guardian, 22.
traditions are Beneficial
How Oral traditions are Beneficial and Challenging
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How Oral traditions are Beneficial and Challenging
Introduction
Written documents are often seen as significant sources of history. Documents such as diaries, letters, and old shopping lists can tell a lot about how a person lived, their thoughts, and feelings regarding what was happening around them. Oral tradition refers to the information that is passed down from one generation to the next through word of mouth without being written down, including law, traditions, and literature (Jansen, 2017). Some examples of oral tradition include proverbs, customs, legends, and folktales. For a long time, Africa was deemed a barbaric continent because it did not have widespread writing. Additionally, people thought that something could only be taught if it was written down. This begs the question of how people learned about societies without written records and with very few illiterate people. The cultures that did not store their history in writing instead told their children stories about what transpired, and this way, culture was passed down from generation to generation. This way, history was kept alive. Worth noting, today historians recognize the role of oral traditions in preserving history. Various investigations conducted on studies found evidence indicating oral history as a source of African history. Oral traditions are useful because they help people know what happened in their societies, help people understand cultural beliefs, solve problems, and handle stressful situations, but they are challenging because of inaccurate transmission, unreliability, and language barrier.
Benefits of Using Oral Traditions
Oral Traditions Help People Know What Happened in Their Societies
To begin with, one of the benefits of oral traditions is that they help people know what transpired in their society long before their existence. At the time, in Africa, written communication was rare, and hence oral communication was the only way to preserve history. Oral traditions are critical in explaining events, including when and why events happened the way they did to people or a community. Stories, in particular helped in passing along key messages to future generations about a community. The stories are beneficial because they give explanations for events in life that even the members of the community themselves cannot explain. For example, fictional stories can explain how leopards came to have spots or a serious matter such as what happens when a person dies.
Oral Traditions Help People Understand People’s Beliefs
Another reason why oral traditions are significant in that they help people understand the cultural beliefs that African held and how they came to have those beliefs. By explaining occurrences and events, they help people understand why their predecessors believed what they did. Additionally, oral traditions also help people understand their feelings about the environment in which they live. Through oral traditions, people understand why a community named mountains, rivers, and other landmarks the way they did. Oral traditions also explain why people carried out practices such as rainmaking dances. Additionally, oral traditions also extend to explaining medical practices. For example, among communities such as Black, Afrikaans, and San people learned how to treat wounds and illnesses from what they observed or learned from their elders. This kind of learning was called apprenticeship. Among the Black and San cultures, medicine men were the ones who had knowledge about treating illnesses but among Afrikaans, medicine men were known as boererate, and anybody could use them.
Oral Traditions Help People Solve Problems and Handle Stressful Situations
Another reason why oral traditions are beneficial is that they help people resolve problems and overcome stressful situations. Particularly tall tales help resolve problems and are commonly used among children to boost their creativity. Tall tales are a type of oral story in which the hero is a supernatural being who possesses unusual strength and is large in size. In tall tales, the hero believes they are ordinary beings, uses ordinary language, and often exaggerates details (Vansina, 1985). Exaggeration is what defines a tall tale as it is often very difficult to believe. Noteworthy, since tall tales are developed using a person’s imagination, it encourages creativity. Tall tales can be silly or funny. They are also filled with descriptive language, metaphors, and similes. These metaphors and similes can be used to refer to a problem indirectly.
Challenges of Oral Traditions
Inaccurate Transmission
Oral traditions grapple with the challenge of inaccurate transmission. The fact that oral traditions rely on word of mouth to pass information from one person to the next and one generation to the next leaves room for mistakes. When a culture does not have a culture language or has very limited writing tools means that somewhere along the way, the information is likely to be distorted. For example, South Africa is a country rich in oral traditions. The stories from South African are numerous and they reference the various cultures existing in the country. For many years, these stories were passed from one generation to the next through word of mouth. Most of them have since been preserved. Before being written and being preserved, each story has its own version. This leads to one tale having several versions because as the narrator tells the story, they are likely to distort it. The fact that the story is told repeatedly and by different people means that some sections were likely to have changed. There is a possibility that the narrator may have omitted an important detail, added new information or simply switched information up in a bid to make it easy for the audience to understand. Despite this, the main stories in oral tradition remain the same and give people important clues concerning the past.
Unreliability
Another challenge associated with oral traditions is their unreliability. One cannot tell if and which account of a story is true and which one is false. As a result, one cannot tell which account of history is accurate, making it unreliable. This is evidenced by the stories narrated to young children growing up, including stories about the lions, the hare and others. This makes it hard to tell which tale if imaginary and which one is true.
Language Barrier
One major challenge associated with oral traditions has to do with language barriers. Oral traditions are passed from one person to the next using word of mouth. If the people are not familiar with the language, telling a story about African history can be challenging. For instance, a person may be having valuable information they want to talk about, but the language may get in the way of telling the story. If all parties involved do not understand the language, the process of communication is limited.
Conclusion
In closing, oral traditions use the word of mouth to pass history from one person to another and one generation to the next. Oral traditions are beneficial but, at the same time, are filled with challenges. Oral traditions are beneficial because they help people understand their cultural beliefs, understand what happened to their societies and resolve problems and overcome tough situations. On the other hand, challenges associated with oral tradition have to do with unreliability, language barrier and inaccurate transmission. Since oral traditions rely on word of mouth to transfer information, the narrator likely distorts the information. All in all despite oral traditions having their downsides, they remain beneficial in transmitting African history from one generation to the next.
References
Jansen, J. (2017). Sunjata: A New Prose Version.
Vansina, J. M. (1985). Oral tradition as history. Univ of Wisconsin
The world is passing through an age
How mass media impacts women
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The world is passing through an age of information explosion. Others use the words “the world has become a global village” to illustrate the changes that have occurred with achieving technological milestones. The electronic media has completely changed the scope of media. Information can easily flow one part of the world to another in a matter of seconds. The advancement in media has had huge impact on all fronts of the world. Perhaps the young generation is the most affected. The older generation was slow to adapt to the massive changes. The forms of media include radio, television, telephone, mobile phones, video conferencing, social networking, and newspapers. The society today is more complex than it was in the 19th century (Perse & Lambe, 2016). Mass media are the conceptualized agencies involved in the creation, selection, processing, and distribution of messages across the globe. The media plays a fundamental role in society as the adage goes information is power. The media informs, educates, advertises, and entertains her listens and readers. The mass media is a top asset for every liberal democracy, and the politicians recognize this hence champion its freedom. In this democracies, the media serves to champion for change and critic the national government.
The ongoing communication revolution has opened up more opportunities for women who were despised for generations. The use of the media remains uncontrolled and misguided. The women and children remain the most disadvantaged groups in society despite the massive brag of technological advancement. Women usually take to the streets to protest the inequality, disparity, and exploitation by the male-dominated media personnel. The media has been particularly active in selling misguided notions and stereotypes that impede achieving gender equality. Scholars postulate that the media continues to display the women as the weaker gender. For example, in the US, mass media outlets sell the notion that men are only sex-driven in relationships while women serve as sexual objects. Feminists argue that the films displayed in the media have contributed to the anorexic Nervosa syndrome observed in the young generations (Cortese, 2015). The new generation has been led to believe that men are only attracted to thin, young and young women.
Women have come a long way in the process of achieving gender equality. The gender protests of the 20th century increased women representation in media outlets, although the numbers are far from achieving gender equality. For instance, women only represent 10% of news stories, they only represent approximately 20% of the experts interviewed, television programs generally have less than 35% of women as actors (Patowary, 2014). Besides, women in films play supporting roles. The stereotypes towards women have been especially detrimental. Some of the stereotypes include: that role of the woman is at home where they have to do all housework duties, women cannot make crucial decisions, women must always be dependent on men, and women are sexual objects. Women have adapted to images sold by the mass media of how they should look. An ideal woman should be thin, white, fit, and with blonde hair. The effect of these is manifested in video games where creators display women with revealing clothes or even nude while the men are usually clothed appropriately.
The articles reveal that women are often disproportionately affected by information inequality in mass media. Women are vastly underrepresented in top positions in media outlets. There is no refuting the benefits of mass media on women empowerment. However, women lag behind men in terms of internet accessibility. Women who have been exposed to the internet are prone to sexual harassment (Hanson, 2016). The situation is worse when women do not conform to social norms. The researchers used various methods to assess the impact of mass media on women. Women have been the punching bags of toxic masculinity. The study incorporated various methods to conduct the research. The researchers conducted their research on both rural and urban women. They used open-ended questionnaires, interviews, and targeted discussions. Some articles analyzed the field research of other articles forming the secondary sources. One study involved sampling 400 women and conducting interviews and questionnaires with them (Patowary, 2014).
In this study, questionnaires and interviews were used to conduct the research. The researchers shall use the Fischer’s formula to determine the representative population. A total of 330 questionnaires shall be distributed equally to the two target groups based on the above formula. The study selected adult women as the only source of information. It will be a cross-sectional study utilizing a purposeful sampling technique to identify the representative population for the research. The study will also be carried out in urban settings as well as in the outskirts.
The researchers trained their personnel on how to conduct impartial interviews to source out information. The statement problem was to determine the impact of mass media on women. It is important to discuss these to identify the stereotypes and the negative influence of the media on women. The papers had several aims. First, it aimed to increase women empowerment. The study aimed to determine the influence of mass media on women in various sectors such as agriculture, occupation, and entertainment. Thirdly, to investigate the changes that have been made by mass media on women (Ibrahim, 2018). The research hypothesis includes: mass media has increased women empowerment, the media has degraded the decency of women through their stereotypic representations, and women have been denied prestigious opportunities because of their genders.
The research was limited by time. It is hard to quantify the number of women who have been empowered through this research. The sample size was small and may not be representative of the population. It was also difficult to assess the impact of mass media on women based on this methodology. A better methodology needs to be reviewed to extrapolate the impact on women. Future studies should focus on the impact of online information on women.
References
Cortese, A. J. (2015). Provocateur: Images of women and minorities in advertising. Rowman & Littlefield.
Hanson, R. E. (2016). Mass communication: Living in the media world. Sage Publications.
Ibrahim, F. (2018). Women, development, and the mass media. Jurnal Komunikasi: Malaysian Journal of Communication, 5.
Patowary, H. (2014). Portrayal of women in Indian mass media: An investigation.
Perse, E. M., & Lambe, J. (2016). Media effects and society. Routledge.