Introduction
Every organization in order to sustain in the market under the umbrella of the government operating in the country needs to follow certain rules and regulations. This will help in the smooth operation of the company and the venture will find it easy to make a place for itself in the market. In case the organization is not following the government rules and regulations, it might hamper or dismantle the operations due to many reasons. This report will contain different rules and regulations that needs to be followed by business organizations in Australia. Further the immediate action of not following the rules will be also discussed in detail. The prime focus of the study will be on the privacy acts and regulations that are laid in the Australian Legislation. Some of the discussions will be done on the Intellectual Property Rights as well. The concerned organization for this report is Uber. Uber is one of the mots progressive business in Australia with great market growth. This report will analyse the impact of the privacy laws on the operations of the organization. Further some recommendations will be provided on how the operations of the organizations can be improved so that the laws can be well incorporated into the operations of the company and more market share can be won.
The characteristics/features of the organisation
In the recent times different services are being provided to the consumers through the online or digital media. From the delivery of the food to the transportation needs, all the services are being available in the online medium. One such flourishing service or business is the cab facilities that are being provided to the consumers (Rimmer, 2017). This revolution of getting the service of the cab at the current location was started by the company known as Uber. Uber has wide-spread operations in Australia. In the present context the organization is doing wide=spread business in the continent. This is a profit-making organization where the user can book a can which will be available at the home location of the user. All the bookings are done through the virtual medium. After the ride is complete the user has to pay for the trip as calculated by the organization. This cab services and the services provided by Uber in many nations of the world has made the transportation options easier for the users. With the help of accurate navigation one can reach different locations with the help of the cab services and the navigation system (Legislation & regulations, 2020). However, it needs to be noted that the amalgamation of the online medium and the transportation industry has made it evident that Uber needs to comply to the rules and regulations in the transport industry and the online medium as well. This has increased the number of laws it needs to follow in order to ensure its smooth operation.
Apart from the legal compliances, the organization provides food delivery facilities as well known as ‘Uber Eats’. This particular venture of the organization has helped to improve the market share of the organization. Many different legal compliances need to be followed by the organization in order to maintain transparency in the operations done by the organization. Firstly the company needs to follow the legal compliances in the cyber industry. The organization should not leak out any information about the riders to someone else or any third party. This will lead to disregard to the data protection and ethical considerations being not followed by the organization (Australian business and environment laws – Austrade, 2020). Secondly, compliances regarding the safety of the passengers while the trip is on needs to be maintained. In case the safety of the passengers are not maintained, it might lead to punishable offence for the organization. Further, road laws and transportation laws need to be followed in order to maintain the road safety and the safety of the driver and passenger.
Therefore, it can be seen that many of the regulations need to be followed by Uber in order to operate in the Australian continent. In case the rules are not followed it lead to punishable offence for the organization which might hamper the image of the brand among the consumers as well as the other competitors in the industry.
(b) Outline any legal governance, management and relationship issues that affect the organisation as a whole
Uber as an organization might be hampered by management, relationship issues or any legal governance being not followed in the operations of the venture. The management of the organization can be said that one of the pillars that holds on to the different departments of the same. Therefore, it can be said that any issue in the management of the organization can dismantle or disrupt the innovation and cause detoriation in the services that are being provided to the consumers. In the same way, the management of Uber can face management issues that might hamper the smooth operations being performed in the organization (Stewart & Stanford, 2017). One of the management issues that can disrupt the operations of the organization is delayed decisions being made by the managers in the organization and time management issues. Managers are the one on the organization that provide the best solutions to problems in the organization and the employees so that the maximum productivity can be gained from the workforce. In other words, it can be said that, with effective decisions from the managers it becomes easy for the employees to perform effectively in the organization (Smith & McCormick, 2019). Thus, delayed response or ineffective response from the managers may hamper the productivity of the employees and the organization at large. The managers should provide effective decisions to the different problems that arise among the employees.
In addition to this, the relationship issues in the organization might hamper the productive environment among the employees. Bad communication among the employees working in Uber will lead to problems in the management and the productivity of the employees. When there is communication gap in the organization the productivity is hampered. Smooth communication should be maintained in the organization among the employees so that tasks can be completed within the time that it has been allocated. One of the relationship issue that might rise is ego and conflict among the employees (Chesterman, 2017). This is due to the lack of team work in the organization. Further, culture and inequality issues can also hamper the smooth flow of operations in the venture. In Uber the legal compliance that can disrupt the smooth flow of operations is the lack of customer data. In the online application through which the cabs are look many important information like the recent location of the rider, the phone number, the account details and the phone number are fed it. In case of cybercrimes like hacking affects the application, millions of data will be hacked which might bring in serious legal compliances and regulatory offences against the organization. Data Protection is an operation that should be carefully handled by the organization so that the venture does not have to face any kind of legal compliance or offenses.
(c) List any general and specific legislation that is of particular importance in regulating the organisation and any relevant industry or similar bodies
The Australian Legislation has numerous policies in order to maintain law and order in the operations of the organization. There are some general regulations that are same for all the economic sectors of the industry. Further, there are som e specific legislations that are followed in specific industry. This part of the study will deal with some general regulations that needs to be followed by the organizations that are operating in the Australian continent. The first legislation is the Intellectual Property Rights (Ahmad, Ribarsky & Reinsdorf,2017). All the business ideas that are operating in the market needs to be have a certification under the Intellectual Property Rights. In this legislation any other company imitating the business idea can be punishable under the law and order of the country. Uber has patented the idea of online cab services being provided to the consumers. People can come up with ideas as similar to the services being provided by Uber, however they cannot copy the same (Australian Intellectual Property laws – Austrade .2020). The online website and the design of the same needs to be also patented under the Trademark and Design section of the Intellectual Property Rights in the country. Further in order to have an official website of the business it is required to register the domain under the extensions .au so that no other organization can use the same domain in order to get their services available to the consumers in the market (Lanois, 2019).
The second legislation that needs to be followed by Uber or similar industry operating in the country is the Data Protection Act. In Australia it is also known as Privacy Laws which is regulated by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). This organization or institution carefully protects all the information that are kept in the digital application. Uber as an organization need to deal with different and important data regarding the riders (Pedersen & Schmidt, 2019). The riders when they register in the organization need to provide their personal information like their names, phone numbers, email address and bank details. The company needs to safeguard all these data so that customer safety can be maintained. In addition to this, the location of the consumer and the trip details also needs to be protected. Every Uber vehicle in Australia has a SOS button in the vehicle which helps in safeguarding the safety of the riders.
Apart from the data protection of the consumers, Uber can be providing all the necessary details of the trip to the rider so that it can be forwarded for various safety reasons. The above-mentioned rules need to be followed by the different organizations that provide similar types of services to the consumers. This will help in maintaining the transparency of the operations among the consumers and the organization (Chipped-Part et al., 2019). The pricing needs to be also transparent to the consumers. While an organization is operating in the market it is required to all the different components of pricing are transparent to the consumers. There should not be any kind of hidden costs. This might mislead the consumers and bring in legal complications in the organization. Therefore, it is required for all the organizations in Australia to follow the regulatory frameworks in order to maintain law and order to the operations of the venture. Further it will also help in increasing the image of the brand among the consumers and competitors (Meltzer, 2018).
(d) Outline areas of high legal risk for the organisation as a whole and Select One to be the centre of your discussion and analysis
An organization when they operate in the external environment need to follow and maintain various rules and regulations in their operations in order to increase the sustainability. In the same way Uber needs to follow the different legislation in the Australian Council in order maintain law and order in the operations (Pearson, 2017). One of the high risks that the organization might face is the loss of theft of data from the database of the organization. In the present context, different types of cybercrime like hacking, phishing and loss of personal information has become very common. For Uber all the operations it is done on the digital format therefore the safeguarding of the data needs to be done in proper format. For this, it is required that safety principles are followed in order to enhance the data usage in the operations of the organization.
Uber is one the high risk of losing out data to the hackers that attack the database of the organization (Compagnucci, Kono & Teramoto, 2020). Data is something that is required in order to run the operations of the organization. In case the data is lost to any third party or hackers it might ruin the reputation of the organization. It has been seen in many instances that when the data of the consumers it lost it leads to the hacking of the bank account which results into losing out of money. This is a high intensity risk and it might malign the reputation of the company for a long period of time. Thus, the company need to have immense security on the websites in order to safeguard the interests and the information of the consumers. Further it needs to be noted that Privacy Laws or Data Protection Acts in the recent scenario are not enough for the safeguarding of the data in the present times. Thus it is required to inherit different cyber security laws in order to keep the operations of the organizations free from the hackers and phishers (Andrew & Baker, 2019).
In Facebook the company the charged against data privacy as the news came out that the organization gives out data to third party applications in order to gain money from the advertisements that are shown. This made the company face tremendous backlash from the users and the some of the operations were stopped. Same has happened to Uber on a small scale. It would not wrong to say that, Truecaller the application has tie-up with the Uber application and leaks out data to this third-party application. However, due to no accidents have occurred due to this collaboration, now such issues have arise (Williams, 2019, June). In addition to this, in case any of the information from the Uber applications is handed over to any third party, Uber have to face severe complications which might destroy the image of the organization and hamper its sustainability in the competitive market. Therefore, all the operations of Uber need to be done in a secured format so that none of the data is lost and no legal compliances are faced by the organization.
(e) Explore the reasons and implications of this legal risk for the organisation both short –term and those that may arise in the long-term.
Data theft is a major to the privacy principles that are followed in the organization. For Uber data along with employees are its key resources in order to run the operations of the organization. In case the company yields a bad name for the theft of the data of the consumers or riders it may lead to destruction of the brand image, and decrease in the share in the transportation market in Australia (Trenham & Steer, 2019). Online cab services are a booming business in most of the parts of the world and in this business, there are high risks of data thefts that might lead to serious repercussions on the operations of the organization. Since the starting of the project the laws regarding the protection of data in the company has been highlighted upon. In this section of the report, the long- and short-term effects of the violation of the data privacy principles will be discussed in detail. It needs to be understood that when hacking or phishing occurs in the data from the database of the organization, it can impact the image of the brand among the consumers and the competitors.
In Uber as all the operations are done through the data provided by the consumer, it is highly required that tight security is maintained and none of the data is lost to any third party. In case the data is lost it might lead to maligning of the image and losing out on the market. In addition to this, in the extreme situation the government of the country might cancel the operating license of the organization forever. Uber might have to face negative legal compliances in case it does not abide the privacy principles in the organization. In case the data of the consumers or any financial information of the company is lost, it might lead to disclosing of unknown facts to the competitive organizations. In this way the USP of the company maybe lost. The financial reports and audit report contain many strategic plans of the organization. Losing out on this information might hamper the competitive edge of the company. This might impact on the company on short term basis. With making in changes in the operation of the organization, new USP can be drafted and new brand image can be constructed. Further, Uber also deals with a lot of information from the consumer side (Wang et al., 2019). Thus, it is equally important to safeguard the information that is provided by the consumers. In case the consumers from the consumers is lost, it can lead to serious long-term impacts on the organization. In addition to this, it needs to be noted that, loss of information that belongs to the consumers is lost it can destroy the company as consumers might lose out on their money in case the information is handled by the hackers. Therefore, it is important for the organization to decrease the long- and short-term impacts of the privacy laws and this will help in improving the image of the company among the competitors.
(f) Identify and describe strategic options for management of this legal risk and evaluate those options in terms of cost and benefit to the organisation
The data that is fed by the different users are controlled by an effective database management system. This is an important department for Uber as all the operations of Uber depend on the data that is provided by the consumers and how the organization processes the data in order to keep its operations smooth and glitch-free. In amount to deal with such huge data base it is important to have a management department that only deals with the data that is required for the operations. There are some strategic plans that can be adapted by the organization in order to decrease the risk that prevail due to the not following of the privacy principles that are laid down in the government of the country (Marin et al., 2019). One of the strategic options that can be adapted by the organization is the safety or password protecting of the information provided by the consumers in the website. All the information that is provided by the consumers or riders should be protected by a lock or password. When any third party tries to hack the information, a notification will be sent to the user and this way the user can put down all the information that he or she has put up in the website. For this system to work the management of Uber should come up with new and innovative data locking systems in the interface of the application. This will surely help the organization follow the privacy acts and legislations in the country. In addition to this, it needs to be noted that this is a cost-effective measure in the organization and will not increase the cost of operation for the organization.
The second strategic management option that can be considered by Uber is, not only outside hackers hack the information that is provided by the consumers. There might be internal hackers as well in the employee base of the organization. Therefore, it is required that the management or some of the particular mangers in the organization should have the right to extract the data from the database of the organization. This will somewhat help in protecting the data that is key source of all the operations at Uber. When the information is restricted to some of the managers in the organization this is a cost-effective process as a greater number of employees need not be recruited in order to extra protect the data (Moens, 2018). As the data will be managed by a limited number of people it can be ascertained that mistakes and handling of the data will be proper and third-party intrusions can be lessened. This will also help in improving the brand image and the sustainability of the organization in the market. At last it can be said that the management of Uber needs to be strict in managing g the database of the organization so that it does not have to face grave issues regarding the mis-management of data that might malign its image in the market.
(g) Offer recommendations as to the most appropriate option and the rationale for those recommendations.
There are some recommendations that can help Uber in improving the operations of the organization and restrict the flow of the same to any third party. Further, some recommendations will be provided in this section of the project that will help the organization in the safeguarding of the data. One recommendation is one team should be set by the organization that will help in preventing the theft of the data. All the recruitment done for this department needs to be strict and the recruitment should be done in a systematic manner. These people need to be very efficient in the operation. All these people will be appointed on a team basis. One team will be recruited for the management of the data from the organization’s end while one team will be recruited for the management of the data from the consumers end. This will help in systematic handling of data. Thus, chances of data theft can be reduced in this way. It needs to be understood that password protecting the information will further enhance the data protection stances in the organization.
Conclusion<?b>
A thorough analysis has been done on the different operations of Uber and how it needs to follow the rules and regulations in order to maintain its sustainability in the market. Uber as an organization complies in the virtual medium. Thus, it can be said that, all then operations of the organization are done with the information provided by the management and the personal information of the consumers. While dealing with this amount of information it is important that none is lost. In case the information is lost it might team to legal complications against the organization and its management. Therefore, this study has included the different risks that might be encountered by the organization when such mishaps arises. Therefore, it is important for Uber to have tight security in the website to ensure that none of the important data of the consumers is lost. In case it is lost it might lead to backlash from the consumers and in the long run the consumer base for the organization might be lost forever, In the ending part of the study some recommendations have been provided in order to follow the rules and regulations in a better way so that company can increase its operations on transparent lines.
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