Uber Sexual Case Study

The Live Case Worksheet

Group Members: Yichen Yang, Pujiao Zhu, Yichen Zhang, Yayu Jiang

1. CASE SYNOPSIS. Your interpretation of the case in one paragraph.  What facts, values, and judgments characterize the moral challenge of this case? Why is it important?

Recently, according to CNN’s investigation, 103 Uber drivers were accused of sexual assault or abuse. One of the victims said that she never thought she would experience this terrible thing because she thought Uber is such a big company, who promises to provide a safe ride for both riders and drivers (O'Brien, Black, Devine, Griffin, 2018). However, things still happened. What’s more, even within this company, employees are suffering from harassment. Some women employees were impropriate touched or commented by others. More than 20 employees were fired after sexual harassment investigation in the company. On the homepage of Uber, we can clearly see a sentence “Safety, our commitment to drivers and riders.” However, Uber does not keep their promise, it even cannot protect the safety of their own employees. Obviously, the compensation should be made to all the victims and stricter policies should be applied. As an industry leader, Uber has brought bad effect to both company and society. For Uber itself, people will doubt the management ability of the company, this hurt company’s reputation. And for the society, it makes people more worried about the social security.  

1. KEY FACTS. Your factual discovery of key events, actors, and evidence:  What relevant evidence and contextual/technical knowledge needs to be considered to understand the situation or problem? What are your sources for the facts of this case and how reliable are they?

Relevant evidence and knowledge:

1.To register as an Uber driver, the material you must provide are driving license, vehicle registration and insurance. Obviously, the audit of background information of the driver is not strict enough.

2.The riders can know the name, picture, license plate number, and grade of the drivers, but customers do not know why the driver has this grade. So, some time it’s very hard for riders to make a judgment on the drivers just base on this information.  

Sources for the facts of this case and whether reliable:

The sources come from the investigations of media and company itself, and some victims are also state their terrible experience. So, the sources are reliable. However, there are more silent victims exist.

1. MORAL ANALYSIS.  Your interpretation of the values conflict or moral challenge.

• What is the main moral issue in this case?  What is at stake? 

Uber, as one of the largest peer-to-peer ridesharing and food delivery company, was found scandals of sexual assault recently from the year 2016 until today one after another. The constant scandals both from inside the companies and among the drivers have caused a very bad social panic.

The main moral issues include: