Uber’s chief executive said the litany of scandals which have plagued the company over the past 12 months will ultimately help to ensure it does the “right thing” in the future.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he believed the media had played a “very, very big part” in ending the take-no-prisoners culture he had inherited on joining the San Francisco firm.
“There is more information now about what is happening … I’m a little mixed because at Uber there has been a ton of leaks etc about what’s happened to Uber and that’s not necessarily a great way to run a company,” he said.
“But if I step back then the leaks and the Susan Fowler exposure etc … it not only started a real cultural change that was painful for Uber but incredibly positive. The leaks etc led Uber to finally understand that it had to make the changes that it is making.”
Khosrowshahi — who joined the pioneer of ride-hailing services last August — has pledged to make a clean break with the U.S. company’s past practices but has been hamstrung by the ongoing fallout from decisions taken by his predecessor and the firm’s co-founder, Travis Kalanick.
The start-up is recovering from a massive data breach, regulatory scrutiny and a damaging workplace culture report. Susan Fowler was an Uber engineer at the firm that revealed systemic sexism in a blogpost in February 2017.
