ANSWER this question using the case study below please:

Using the books graphical representation of Fiedlers contingency model, compare under which situation would Kalanick do best to under which situation would Khosrowshahi do best.

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This part of the Uber continuing case focuses on Chapter 13 and covers principles related to power, leadership and effective communication. This continuing case's real-world application of management knowledge and skills is designed to help you develop critical thinking ability and realise the practical power of sound managerial skills for solving problems in your job and career.

Power and leadership at Uber

Situational approaches to leadership tell us that effective leadership depends on the situation at hand. This was surely the case at Uber. Ubers first CEO, Travis Kalanick, used a leadership style that propelled the company to the top of its industry. Unfortunately, his style created problems over time, resulting in his being replaced by Dara Khosrowshahi, a leader with a very different style. Lets explore the leadership approaches used by Kalanick and Khosrowshahi.

Kalanick led Uber to the top

Kalanick took advantage of Ubers highly ambiguous operating environment. Ubers workers were willing to follow him from the start due to his use of legitimate, reward, coercive, expert, and referent power. Kalanick also displayed a lot of task-oriented leader behaviours. Some examples:

• Initiating structure. Kalanick focused on performance above all else and fostered an environment in which employees should do whatever it took to gain market share and grow the company. He encouraged risk-taking and gave managers permission to begin operating in new markets as long as any laws they were violating werent being enforced. Even when the companys lawyers began urging Kalanick to balance his desire for innovation with the need for compliance, he continued to encourage managers to focus on growing the business. Kalanick also gained a reputation as a micromanager. If he wasnt happy with the companys numbers in a particular city, he would get in touch with the locations managers directly to set higher growth goals and/or figure out ways to edge out the competition.
• Transactional leadership. Ubers employees knew they had to perform in order to be rewarded. By 2017 Ubers culture had grown to one where performance meant numbers, and the only people deemed top performers were those working 70+ hours a weekincluding nights, weekends, and holidays. Kalanick also created an environment where workers bad behaviours were ignored as long as they were performing, as evidenced by widespread allegations of Ubers senior management ignoring sexual harassment complaints.

Things changed: a different style of leadership was needed

By the time former attorney general Eric Holder and his law firm released 13 pages of recommendations for Uber on 13th June 2017, Kalanick had lost respect from both his workers and the public. In their report, Holders committee recommended that Uber focus on four prevailing themes with regard to taking the following remedial measures: tone at the top, trust, transformation, and accountability. These four themes all point to Ubers need for a different kind of leadership than Kalanick was providingsomething Ubers investors clearly agreed with as they demanded his resignation just days after the recommendations were released.

Kalanick obviously had a hard time changing his leadership style to fit the situation. He was known as a rule-breaker, innovator, and a market disruptor. He also acted first, then asked forgiveness for his behaviour later. What Uber needed now was someone who could: (1) work with regulators to set precedent and craft rules, (2) refine and stabilise the company and its image, and (3) repair Ubers damaged relationships.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi used power right from the start

Ubers disillusioned employees needed a leader they could respect as both an industry expert and, more importantly, a human being. Here are some of the reasons Dara Khosrowshahi was able to quickly gain the respect of many of Ubers workers:

• Referent power. By the time he took over as Ubers CEO, Khosrowshahi had earned a reputation among his peers as someone who was well-liked and well-respected. Burke Norton, a former Salesforce and Expedia senior executive, said Dara is the smartest, most passionate and thoughtful executive Ive worked with in 25 years, praising Khosrowshahis super high integrity and calling him a phenomenal leaderthe kind of leader whom people would follow into a burning building. His cousin Ali Partovi said Khosrowshahi was a perfect choice to lead Uber out of its current firestorm because he is such a statesman and has been that for decades, adding that when he speaks up, people listen to him. Khowrowshahi had also consistently earned CEO approval ratings over 90% during his time at Expedia.
• Expert power. Khosrowshahis work as Expedias CEO also gave him the expertise that Uber needed. Arvind Bhambri, a professor at the USC Marshall School of Business and expert on CEO transitions, said that Khosrowshahis experience was highly relevant and transferable to Ubers situation, citing the overlap between Uber and Expedia and adding that Hes done deals, hes worked with strong personalities, hes managed a high-growth company.

Khosrowshahis leadership style at Uber

Khosrowshahi displayed a lot of relationship-oriented leadership behaviours after taking over as Ubers CEO. Here are some examples:

• Consideration. Khosrowshahis peers described his leadership as attentive and approachable. He listens very carefully, he doesnt take copious notes, but he remembers things, said Sunil Shah, who worked alongside Khosrowshahi as a VP of engineering at Expedia. Khosrowshahi made public commitments to repair damaged relations with Ubers drivers. He took turns working as an Uber driver himself, listened to drivers concerns, and used their feedback to refine Ubers app into one that provided a more user-friendly experience and a faster payment process for drivers.
• Empowering workers. Khosrowshahi believed in empowering his team. He said he believed the best way to manage Ubers growth was to put the right people in the right places and then you trust them to do the right stuff. It requires a very strong core culture and our core culture is one about being different its about valuing the employee and then trusting them to do the right thing for the company and so far its worked for us.

Khosrowshahi used transformational leadership

Examples of Khosrowshahis transformational leadership:

• Inspiring workers. Khosrowshahis former Expedia employees referred to him as visionary and a thought leader. One former worker felt a lot of hope and optimism when they started at Expedia due to the passion and sense of innovation that Khosrowshahi and the other executives seemed to exude. In discussing concerns over passenger safety in light of events that had taken place under Kalanicks leadership, Khosrowshahi expressed his vision for regaining the publics trust, saying The predators in life look for dark corners. Our job is to tell the world that Uber has its lights on.
• Expressing high ideals. Khosrowshahi has encouraged young people at the forefront of their careers to go to a place that is making a difference in the world. In discussing his decision to leave Expedia for Uber, he said This is a company that I believe is important for the world. This is a company that is providing opportunities for 3 million driver partners all around the world and I believe that we will be a fundamental part of transportation and mobility in cities everywhere. He was also praised for his support for reunification of separated immigrant families. Khosrowshahi and his mother and siblings were separated from his father for six years after immigrating to the U.S. during his childhood, and he expressed his support for immigrant families passionately and publicly in 2018. He pledged company money, encouraged employees to donate and speak out, and deployed Ubers legal team to partner with law firms that were working pro bono to assist with family reunification efforts.

Communication at Uber

In spring 2017, in the wake of departures by other Uber top leaders (Jeff Jones, Ed Baker), Rachel Whetstone, the companys director of policy and communications since 2015, also took her leave. The New York Times reported that Whetstone and her boss, then-CEO Kalanick, were intense personalities and occasionally clashed over how to handle external communications, especially in times of crisis. The speculation, a communications advisor told The Guardian, is that Uber is so male heavy and toxic at management levels that even someone like [Whetstone] . . . is exhausted by the machismo.

External communications are an important responsibility for anyone in a leadership position, and Whetstone had steered the company through several firestorms, including scandals over Ubers workplace culture and its executives behaviour. In an email to her staff, Whetstone talked about always-on jobs that are exciting yet exhausting.

Did all the bad press represent a failure of Uber PR? Recode writer Kara Swisher doesnt think so. The company, she wrote, had troubles because it neglected to put key human resources and management systems in place that would counter its rich-frat-boy-meets-Vegas tendencies.

Its important to note that Uber has improved its communication strategy over time. Here are some examples:

Communicating with local governments:

Technology writer Brad Stone points out that early tech leaders, such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and the Google founders, didnt have to be good storytellers because their businesses spread virally and their products stood for themselves. Uber (and Airbnb), by contrast, had to deal with regulatory battles with cities, which required a different kind of CEOextroverted, a good storyteller, a politician, someone who could charismatically rally customers to their cause, Stone says.

Communicating with customers:

Uber has been quite successful using social media to connect with customers, tailoring posts to particular regions and allowing people to post what they like and dont like about the company. They also engaged customers through deals and promotions, as in showing how to get free rides.

Communicating with employees:

Uber employees once relied on Atlassians HipChat, a web service for team-based internal private online chat, instant messaging, group chat, video chat, and screen sharing. Describing the intense work hours at Uber, Melanie Curtin says it was not uncommon to sign on to HipChat (the way the entire company stays in touch) at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, and see lots of colleagues online, working, as well.

By mid-2017 Uber developed its own internal chat interface, called uChat, when it realised that HipChat wasnt serving its complex needs. The company designed uChat to handle up to 70,000 users at once and migrated 20,000 existing chat rooms into the new app so that users didnt lose any existing work conversations.

Communicating with drivers:

As mentioned, Uber used algorithmic management through the Uber app and notifications to communicate with and motivate its contractor drivers.

Communicating with the public:

In May 2018 Uber issued a video apology ad with Khosrowshahi speaking directly to stakeholders. Khosrowshahi didnt recount Ubers specific scandals or problems in the ad; instead, he used it to make a personal commitment that the company was moving forward, changing its culture, and improving its service for both riders and drivers. The ad struck a strong positive chord even though similar ads run by Facebook and Wells Fargo had fallen flat. According to psychiatrist and business consultant Prudy Gourguechon, Ubers ad checked the key boxes of a good corporate apology. Specifically, (1) the narrative focused on Ubers customers and the public, not on Uber, (2) the message was specific about how the company planned to improve itself and why this was important to its stakeholders, and (3) Uber took full responsibility for its actions.

In the Summer of 2018, Uber aired a docuseries called Where to, Britain? in the UK. The series followed Uber drivers around in six different cities in an attempt to solidify an image of riding in an Uber as another everyday part of British life.

Uber CEO Khosrowshahi went on a public apology tour after taking the helm. He penned an open letter to Londoners after Ubers licence was withdrawn in the city, and he participated in an interview on NBCs Today Show where he addressed issues such as sexual harassment and the companys use of customer data.

Communication between drivers and riders:

In September 2017 Uber launched a tool that offered riders who had been matched with hearing impaired drivers the option to learn a few key ASL (American Sign Language) signs from within the app while they waited for their drivers to arrive. The signs included those for saying hello and thank you, introducing yourself to the driver, and giving basic navigation prompts such as turn right and turn left.

In July 2018 Uber issued three updates to its app to help drivers and riders better communicate. The first update added pickup message capability that allowed riders to share information such as specific descriptions of their clothing colour or location. The app communicated messages from riders to drivers through a voice-enabled service to encourage safe driving. The second update, called a spotlight feature, allowed riders to light up their phones with a specific colour to help drivers spot them on the street. The third update gave frequent riders the option to schedule, at no additional cost, a guaranteed on-time pickup from an Uber driver as early as 30 days in advance of their travel.

Communication between riders and emergency services:

Uber incorporated a safety centre that riders could access easily from the apps home screen. The safety centre included information about Ubers driving screening process and the companys insurance protections. Riders could also designate up to five friends with whom to share their location during a ride. Finally, the safety center featured an emergency button that riders could press to instantly call 911 in an emergency.