When an Unethical Corporate Culture Becomes Dangerous in a Primitive U.S. State: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars in Arizona

A company with a horrendous reputation for having an unethical, and harsh, company culture is likely to be attracted to places in which lax regulatory oversight exists. A governmental view that regulations should be minimized dovetails with such a company. The two are a match, though not exactly made in heaven. The nexus can be situated closer to the ground, in a desert in North America, in Arizona in particular. In the case of Uber, which was testing its self-driving cars there in 2018, the flashpoint came in March, when such a car hit a pedestrian who was crossing a street without a sustained sidewalk. Suddenly society took another look, a much more hesitant look, at self-driving technology. Missed, however, was the nexus between Uber’s squalid culture/mentality and Arizona—the culpability of both having led to a perfect storm.

The full essay is at "Uber in Arizona: A Perfect Storm"

Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook’s Unjust Strategic Leader in a Crisis

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook (and Instagram) “remained silent” during the two days after the data-breach scandal broke in March, 2018 as E.U. and U.S. lawmakers “pummeled Facebook and its stock price” dropped 9 percent.[1] The company lost $50 billion in market value in just those two days![2] Beyond the self-interested investors and the demoralized employees, the company’s 2 billion users—the suppliers of the raw content (to be mined as well as shared)—and the world (i.e., societal level) looked for ethical (i.e., atoning as well as protective) leadership from the company’s CEO. To be just, I submit, the leadership could not have been a mere reflection of Zuckerberg’s or Facebook’s immediate self-interests.

The full essay is at "Leadership Lacking at Facebook."

Employees look for leadership in the midst of a demoralizing crisis. (USA Today)

See the essay, "Facebook: A Distrustful Company."

See also the booklet, Taking the Face off Facebook

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1. Jessica Guynn, “As Facebook Reels from ‘Catastrophic Moment’ in Cambridge Analytica Crisis,” Mark Zuckerberg Is Silent,” USA Today, March 21, 2018.

2. Kevin Roose and Sheera Frenkel, “Missing From Facebook’s Crisis: Mark Zuckerberg,” The New York Times, March 21, 2018.

Customers Give Uber a Pass: A Lapsed Enforcement of Business Ethics

A letter from a former security employee at Uber claims that the company’s Marketplace Analytics department “exists expressly for the purpose of acquiring trade secrets, codebase and competitive intelligence.”[1] The letter caused the judge to delay the trial in which Uber stood accused of stealing trade secrets involving self-driving cars from Waymo. “I can no longer trust the words of the lawyers for Uber in this case,” Judge Alsup said.[2] Ouch! The question remained whether Uber customers would punish the company by turning to Lyft instead. Unfortunately, the typical customer may overlook unethical practices at a company if a good deal is to be had. Economizing monetarily serves self-interest, whereas “walking with your wallet” oftentimes does not. Standing on principle may simply not register when people have their consumer hats on.

The full essay is at "Consumer Enforcement of Business Ethics."

  

[1] Becky Peterson, “Ex-Uber Staffer Says in Bombshell Letter that the Company Had a Unit Dedicated to Stealing Trade Secrets,” Business Insider, November 28, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

Institutional Conflicts of Interest: Business and Public Policy

Typically people react emotionally much more severely to an exploited conflict of interest when a person gains a personal benefit such as through a bribe. If company, or even an office or department thereof, stands to benefit inordinately, American society typically looks the other way on the institutional conflict of interest rather than taking it apart. This may just be human nature. However, the troubling institutional arrangements within an organization or between them may be tolerated because of the erroneous assumption that conflicts of interest are unethical only when they are exploited. Accordingly, the book provides a solid grasp of the structure and essence of the conflict of interest in order to make the case that it is inherently unethical. Examples of institutional conflicts of interest readily come from business, with particular attention to corporate governance and the financial sector, as well as from how business and government relate, such as through regulation The reader should come away with a sense of just how pervasive and ethically problematic institutional conflict of interests are. 

The book, Institutional Conflicts of Interest: Business and Public Policy, is available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com

Uber Tricking Law Enforcement: An Unethical Corporate Culture Externalized

A company with a culture in which in-fighting and heavy-handed treatment of subordinates are not only tolerated, but also constitute the norm can have good financials. With operations in more than 70 countries and a valuation of close to $70 billion in 2017, Uber could be said to be a tough, but successful company. Yet the psychological boundary-problems that lie behind such an organizational culture can easily be projected externally to infect bilateral relations with stakeholders. In the case of Uber, those stakeholders include municipal law enforcement. Even more than as manifested within the company, the external foray demonstrates just how presumptuous “boundary issues” are. Such presumption can blind even upper-level managers to just how much their company has overstep. In reading this essay on Uber’s program to evade law enforcement, you may be struck by the sheer denial in the company.

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Über “Surge-Pricing”: There’s a Mobile App for Price-Gouging!

A week into 2012, The New York Times ran a piece on Ubur (as in Übermench?), a taxi and livery company founded in 2009. As Curtis Lanoue aptly describes in his essay on the company, its novelty consists of a unique mobile app that passengers, drivers and the company’s managers use to bring demand and supply into equilibrium by means of differential pricing including “surge pricing.”[1] The price of a taxi or livery depends on temporal and geographic demand and supply levels. That is to say, the pricing increases as more people request rides. Theoretically, the pricing should go back down even in situations in which the demand is high as drivers are enticed to continue driving a few more hours. Hence, the wait time for an Uber cab after a concert or sporting event should be reduced even if the first people out have to wait until the price goes down or pay more than they expected. In this essay, I suggest that such “stickiness” in even such a small-scale market mechanism as a mobile app can give rise to some formidable ethical problems.

Price-gouging primped up as a mobile app?  (Image Source: thevirge.com)

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.