REF: Case Study of Legal and Ethical Issues at Uber (ukdiss.com)

Uber's Unethical Conduct

On February 19, 2017, Sam Levin wrote an article outlining sexual harassment claims made by Susan Fowler. A blog written by Susan Fowler, a former engineer at Uber, detailed her sexual harassment experience that was initiated by her manager. This detailed report prompted Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, to announce an urgent investigation. Fowler claimed when she joined the engineering team, her manager immediately propositioned her for sex. On her first day of work, her manager sent her a series of messages saying that he was in an open relationship and trying to find new partners. Fowler told him that his behavior was clearly out of line. She took screenshots of the messages and sent them to Human Resources. Fowler expected a company of Uber's size to handle the problem quickly, but she met resistance. According to Human Resources, this was the man's first offense and since he was a top performer for the company, all they did was give him a "stern talking to." (Levin, 2017)

After talking to more female engineers in the company, Fowler found out that some of the ladies had reported inappropriate interactions with the same manager before she worked at Uber. When these ladies reported their incidents, they were told that it was his "first offense. This man eventually left the company, but when she tried to transfer to a different team, Fowler was blocked although she met the qualifications. In fact, Fowler had a "perfect performance score." She was later told that performance was not just about the score, it also factors in things outside work and personal things. When Fowler first joined, her organization was 25% female; by the time she tried to transfer to another team, the female demographic had dropped to 6%. When asked about the declining numbers, the director said the female engineers were not good enough (Levin, 2017).

After filing several more reports to Human Resources about discrimination, Fowler was told that she was on thin ice and that one more complaint would cause her termination. Although it was illegal to terminate an employee based on these complaints, Fowler quit Uber sooner after and joined Stripe (Levin, 2017).

QUESTIONS:

What unethical behavior was noticed here? What are the ethical dilemmas?