MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESS CONTEXT OF UBER
Tutor’s Name
Content List
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………2
Organizational structures and their importance………………………………………………2
Organizational functions of diverse firms……………………………………………………..3
Organizations and business practices………………………………………………………..4
Environmental forces……………………………………………………………………………5
Risk confronting the organizations…………………………………………………………….6
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….6
Reference list…………………………………………………………………………………….7
Introduction
The business markets in the complex world are growing at a rapid pace. With consequent changes, the markets are facing several consequences that need to keep the organizational strategies and tactics updated. The organizational strategies are grabbing a huge importance in every range of organizations. Several uncontrollable factors are affecting the business performance of organizations, which has become a global business context. In search of appropriate solutions for the booming business hindrances, many organizations are distracting towards the opposite way and rather than finding a solution. The reason behind the failure of marketing strategy in context to business has several phenomena. The business context should be clearly understandable and executable. In this report, a critical examination of the issues in confronting a business management will be illustrated. A detailed understanding of the business context, issues, and probable solutions would be explained in a detailed manner. By using several kinds of literature, journal, and tools; a brief examination will be done. For a better analysis with an example of a real case of an organization, I have chosen ‘UBER’ as a case. I would make a detailed study of the critical issues that UBER is facing in its day-to-day business activities. Before examining the critical organizational issues in context to UBER, it is vital to understand the business structure in brief. Time to time in the sections, the real case will be illustrated with the theoretical perspective.
Organizational Structures and their Importance
A business organization can be contented with several types of contexts. The business contexts not only support the mission and vision statement, but it allows the owner to regulate by putting suitable strategies. A business can vary from situation to situation, region to region and entrepreneur to entrepreneur. The important point about an organization is that it always provides a clear platform to perform the business activities by manipulating fitting strategies. An organization can be any of the following:
Sole trader: – A sole trader is an individual who trades business activities and shares the total risk an investment himself. In general context, sole trading is the best and most popular organizational structure in the world market (Australian Government, 2017).
Partnership: – Alike the sole trading, the partnership business holds the same but among two or more persons. The partnership is a good deal to share the business and financial risk among the partners as per the contract. A sole trading has no specific and mandatory rules or regulations to register its business under any company law, but the partnership is bound to. There are several partnership acts in different countries (Kohler, 2015).
Company: – A company is a legal entity with separate characteristics from the management and board of directors. A company is formulated to carryover the business by applying suitable marketing strategies in the day to day company activities. (Rampton, 2014)
Trust/Cooperatives: – A trust or Cooperative Society is a non-profit making organization whose sole aim is to perform social work. In many cases, the trust is organized by its members to facilitate the society with their beneficial activities (Gill, 2014).
The taken company UBER is a multinational company which operates its business on the basis of franchises. It has all the similarities as a company, and it maintains the standard of its service. UBER is associated with cab-taxi rent service in different segments. It has popularized its name as a multinational cab-taxi leader with a high market growth and high market share which always provided a wide platform to maintain the business efficiently (Zaleski and Tartar, 2016).
Organizational functions of diverse firms
Organizational functions are executed by several functional activities within an organization. Among them, there are four key functions need to establish organizational communication to make the business activities implement comfortably. The four key functional areas in an organization can be finance, marketing, human resource, and operation. The operation activities are associated with the production activities of a business firm; it controls, directs, manages and supervises the activities and quality through a smooth operation network. The marketing activities commence with a hope to place the products and services in the market successfully by creating customer attention at the same time. The marketing function is quite important for an organization as it is the dedicated way to generate the sales revenue. All the other functions are associated with maintaining the internal business activities mostly. The finance is solely associated with all types of financial transactions, financial records, maintenance and analysis activities. The human resource function has the responsibility to handle, monitor and recruits the human resources in an organization. The most important factor can be defined in this situation is there couldn’t be a successful venture without proper cooperation among the all four functional departments (Sevilla, 2015).
The association of these four functions at UBER is quite different. As UBER is a taxi-cab service providing company, it has only the marketing, human resource, and finance functions proceeding in its company. Uber is focusing on marketing activities to strength its market status to grab the leading position internationally. (Chokkattu and Crook, 2014)
Organization and Business Practices
Business practices in an organization refer to the activities accompanied with the day to day running of the business. By performing a suitable business transaction, an organization can establish an opportunity platform for product development, market development, and market penetration possibilities. The business activities are commenced with a motive to generate High-performance Work Practices in the business environment to strengthen the cognitive, emotional and behavioral circumstances by the employees. The organization should procure training and development activities to motivate the employees to engage in the business activities more efficiently (Lawler and Worley, 2006).
In this business management context, UBER always tried to motivate its employees and taxi drivers to work with it at a great joy. To create the best business platform, UBER has provided its cab-taxi drivers the best technological tools to attract the customers easily. Rather than it, the flexible fair rate as per the service category has also given the butter in the cake. By understanding the international cab market, UBER is not only updating itself valuable business strategies but also it has supporting its manpower with best facilities to enjoy the work with optimum sales revenue (Sarkosky, 2016).
Environmental forces
To make an effective analysis of the external environment of Uber the use of PESTEL analysis could give an effective result. The PESTEL framework of external environment includes factors including Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal elements. (CIPD, 2015) The political environment includes the effects uber suffered due to the changes in government in different countries in the world. The government policies, tax policies, labor laws, trade restrictions and political stability factors come under the political environment. The economic environment includes various economic elements like the per-capita income, the standard of living, economic growth, interest rates, inflation, exchange rates and disposable income. The social factors of the external environment include the population, age group employment stability in the society, health consciousness, level of education and standard of living elements. The technological factors of a macro business environment include the technology the company is using to develop a flexible supply chain in its business. The environmental factors are directly concerned with the elements of the environment, which includes natural resources available, environmental health issues and recycling procedures. At last the legal factors of external environment include the various law and order process to do the business in a region without any objection of the law authorities. In considering the growth opportunities the PESTEL analysis, the use of SWOT analysis can be helpful to find the strength, weakness, opportunity and threats for the taxicab business of Uber.
In consideration of the PESTEL strategy, the political environment factors the government rules and regulations affected the business of Uber time to time. As per the US government rules not more than 20,000 black cabs and not more than 49000 vehicles can be licensed for private hire of a particular taxicab company. The poor economic stability of some underdeveloped countries and developing countries forced Uber to wait for the appropriate time to invest wisely. In the starting phase of business operation, the founders of Uber tried to facilitate the taxicab service with the use of advanced technological tools and a high-speed taxicab service at a feeling of riding a bike, but the social attitude of people gave a negative result. The technological environment of Uber includes its proposal and unique service of Uber mobile app and a high-end electronic payment system. This facility is declined in many countries as a confusion to adapt or not, which affected the business of Uber drastically. The environmental factor of Uber includes the transportation and environmental situations that created problem to invest in the said regions doubtfully. Finally, the legal factors of different countries also created hindrances to start a business in the countries. The restrictions of licensing of private taxicabs in US and London tell a clear idea that Uber need to be careful in doing business in the countries (Zhang, 2015).
Risk confronting the organizations
Risk refers to the future uncertainty for the outcomes expected to derive a positive result. The organizational objectives always have the risk value by its side, which influences the overall performance of the functional activities. The risk situations arise due to the less efficiency level of the human resource of an organization. Risk can only be minimized effectively if the strategies would be implemented in a best possible manner. (Berg, 2010) In consideration of the risk factor, UBER always did its best in motivating its manpower towards a dedication value. UBER implemented its marketing strategies after al thorough market research and analysis only. UBER never took the risk to execute its ideas in uncertain circumstances. This has not only minimized the risk factor of UBER, but also it strengthened the operational capabilities to run its business (Pullen, 2014).
Conclusion
With a detailed explanation of the management and business context issues, the probable strategically solutions also demonstrated in brief. The business organization example of UBER has also helped in mapping the practical idea related to the explained strategies and solutions. The all five sections discussed in brief are the general consequences happen in an organization.
Reference list
Australian Government website. (2017, February 24). Sole Trader. Retrieved from https://www.business.gov.au/info/plan-and-start/start-your-business/business-structure/business-structures-and-types/sole-trader.
Berg, H.P. (2010). Risk Management: Procedures, methods, and experiences, Risk: Analysis & Theory, Vol. 1, No. 2 [17], pp. 79 – 95.
Chokkattu, J. and Crook, J. (2014, August 14). A brief history of UBER. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/gallery/a-brief-history-of-uber/.
CIPD. (2015, October 15). PESTLE analysis. Retrieved from https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/strategy/organisational-development/pestle-analysis-factsheet.
Gill, P. (2014, February 18). Comparative analysis – section 25 company, society, trust and private limited company. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/prabhjeetgill5/comparison-section-25-pvt-company-trust-society. s
Kohler, M. (2015, May 28). Everything you know about business partnerships. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244632.
Lawler, E.E. & Worley, C.G. 2006. Built to Change: How to Achieve Sustained Organizational Effectiveness, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Pullen, J. P. (2014, November 4). Everything you need to know about Uber. Retrieved from http://time.com/3556741/uber/.
Rampton, J. (2014, August 4). 50 tips for starting your company. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235903.
Sarkosky. (2016). Uber stakeholder analysis. Retrieved from https://www.coursehero.com/file/p4764bj/UBER-STAKEHOLDER-ANALYSIS-6-In-summary-the-stakeholders-of-the-firm-include-all/.
Sevilla, C. M. (2015, December 17). List of functional areas of business. Retrieved from http://foundersguide.com/functional-areas-of-a-business/.
Zaleski, O. and Tartar, A. (2016, August 23). Uber is now the most popular taxi app in 108 countries, data show. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-23/uber-is-the-most-popular-ride-hailing-app-in-108-countries.
Zhang, S. (2015, October, 3). UBER. Retrieved from https://prezi.com/ozfxdywst_j9/uber/.