Uber’s Toxic Culture: A Case Study

Organizational culture is a pertinent topic for any company, and culture can have both positive and negative effects on employees, productivity, and the bottom line.  The purpose of this post is to explore more of those negative effects and understand how companies with destructive organizational cultures can use diversity initiatives to turn culture into something more positive and productive. 

Culture, very simply put, is "the way we do things around here.” Culture is important to consider because it governs rules of interacting between employees on a day-to-day basis.  The ways in which people talk, write, converse and just are with each other are woven into fabric of organizational life.  When coming to a new company, you may be able to observe the organizational culture best because it may contrast sharply with the culture of previous companies you’ve worked for.  After awhile though, you may stop noticing these differences as you get more and more accustomed to in these newer standards of behavior and conduct.

In the past few weeks, Uber has been in the news repeatedly with a string of bad press.  Specifically, the negative conduct of many employees, whom one employee refers to as “brogrammer” culture is rife with allegations of sexual harassment.  Susan Fowler Rigetti, who wrote the blog I refer to, detailed many instances of going to management with complaints of sexual harassment at work.  She was told that the company would protect the man who harassed her because he was a high performer.  She also recounted how very few women worked at Uber, and after over a year there, that number continued to dwindle.  Eventually, and unsurprisingly, she left the company.

These issues might be symptoms of a wider problem – a pervasive negative culture that has trickled down from senior management.  So, while this kind of behavior existed and was reinforced within the company-at large, what was taking place in the C-suite?  There are some clues as to what type of conduct the CEO at Uber considers to be acceptable.  Shortly after Susan Rigetti’s blog post detailing the egregious workplace culture at Uber went viral, Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber, was caught on camera arguing with an Uber driver.  They argued over what the driver said was unfair working conditions. Kalanick retorted back, with very little empathy for the driver’s plight, “Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit.”  Earlier on the same ride, a female friend in the backseat asked about the state of business at Uber and mentioned she thought it had been a difficult year for the company. Kalanick said that, “I make sure every year is a hard year.” He continued, “That’s kind of how I roll. I make sure every year is a hard year. If it’s easy I’m not pushing hard enough.”  These two interchanges, caught on tape, give a pretty good sense of what type of leader Kalanick is – one who drives (no pun intended) employees relentlessly and has little regard for their personal insecurity.

When leaders model such caustic behaviors in their everyday life, they are implicitly telling others within the organization that those behaviors are acceptable, and this can have an impact on the wider company.  We know from previous research on social networks that people want to work with others who are similar to them.  Usually, research focuses on how demographic characteristics are one major way people select for similarity (think all men in the C-suite), but personality characteristics can also be a point of similarity. We also know that once people are attracted to similar others and join a particular company, depending on how the company fits with their expectations, they either decide to stay or go.  Put succinctly, organizations tend to become full of similar people with similar traits over time, which is known as the attraction-selection-attrition model.  Putting these pieces together, Kalanick seems to have made Uber a breeding ground for these types of behaviors to exist.  He has done this, in part, because of his cut-throat management style that has most likely become embedded in all parts of the organization. Simply put, he has modeled for others that those behaviors are acceptable.  In summation, these insidious management practices, that Rigettinotes, have become a part of the organizational culture.

Getting back to Rigetti’s blog though, one issue strikes me as particularly interesting given my research interests on the lack of women present in leadership positions in organizations today.  What if Uber had more female leaders – would this type of organizational culture still exist at Uber?  I am not suggesting that simply promoting more women into leadership positions would be the panacea that Uber needs in order to course-correct. Furthermore, given the attraction-attrition-selection model, Uber may be likely to hire only women who have a particular set of personality traits that are similar to those at Uber writ large.  But, I do wonder what kind of an impact female leadership would have on Uber’s culture, especially because of the noted drop of female employees during Rigetti’s tenure.

So while culture can either make or break an organization, and many of these cultural traits can stem from the C-suite because of tendencies to hire similar individuals, there are things organizations can do to prevent negative traits from becoming overpowering.  One of these, I suggest, is to enhance diversity initiatives.  If a company like Uber could recruit more female programmers in order to water down the negative “brogrammer” culture, the presence of these women might be able to help shape the organizational culture.  They could do this by modeling specific behaviors they deem acceptable (namely, that sexual harassment should never be tolerated in any organization).  Hiring more female leaders specifically could help those positive behaviors (and absence of negative behaviors) permeate top levels of leadership.  Given enough time and the proper context to thrive, these behaviors would have the capacity become a yardstick for future behavioral interactions.  Furthermore, given tendencies described in the attraction-selection-attrition model, these behaviors might be able to permeate throughout the entire company to become baked into the organizational culture over time.

However, there is hope for Uber.  Recently, Uber hired Eric Holder to investigate claims of workplace harassment, which may help shine the light needed to expose and correct negative workplace behaviors.  Arianna Huffington, a champion for female leaders everywhere, has also become involved in her role as a board member.  After the video of Kalanick arguing with a driver went viral, Kalanick admitted he needed “leadership help” which, while obvious, was probably personally difficult to state publically, and I do hope he utilizes resources to correct his leadership style.  In making some of these needed modifications, and with other agents for change becoming more active within the organization (e.g., Holder and Huffington), Uber might have a chance to shift their organizational culture into something more positive for their employees.

Selected references: 

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.

Rigetti, S. J. (2017, February 19). Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber. Retrieved March 14, 2017, from https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber

Newcomer, E. (2017, February 28). In video, Uber CEO argues with driver over falling fares. Retrieved March 14, 2017, fromhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-28/in-video-uber-ceo-argues-with-driver-over-falling-fares

Ibarra, H. (1992). Homophily and differential returns: Sex differences in network structure and access in an advertising firm. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37(3): 422-447.

Schaubroeck, J., Ganster, D. C., & Jones, J. R. (1998). Organization and occupation influences in the attraction–selection–attrition process. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(6), 869.

Ployhart, R. E., Weekley, J. A., & Baughman, K. (2006). The structure and function of human capital emergence: A multilevel examination of the attraction-selection-attrition model. Academy of Management Journal, 49(4), 661-677.

Overly, S. (2017, February 21). Uber hires Eric Holder to investigate sexual harassment claims. Retrieved April 03, 2017, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/02/21/uber-hires-eric-holder-to-investigate-sexual-harassment-claims/?utm_term=.4ab906513ce7

Lashinsky, A. (2017, March 02). Uber's CEO asked for leadership help, so here's some advice. Retrieved April 03, 2017, from http://fortune.com/2017/03/02/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-driver-advice/