Uberization and its Ethical Challenges: The Case of Russian Taxi Market

This study examines the problems of "uberization" on the example of the taxi market in Russia. With the launch of online taxi services, which have replaced the traditional type of business, there are more questions about the regulation of the market and its features appear. In particular, there are issues related to the legislative regulation of this type of organizations and problems arising in the course of their absence, including ethical ones, as unmanned taxi services (also called "aggregators"), which are an "information source" connecting a driver and a passenger, are not controlled by the state authorities on the same basis as licensed taxis, moreover, as all drivers are not directly employed on the service aggregator, they have to work under special conditions. In this study, the author is based on scientific articles about how the services have been improved in other countries, and the features of this type of economy, comparing the precedents in regulation on the part of both states and drivers and their reaction to market changes, analyzes the taxi market in Russia and other countries. This is a situational qualitative study in which the author conducted in-depth interviews with 35 drivers from different cities of the country cooperating with aggregators in Russia to learn about the unobvious problems in working with aggregators and the decisions that companies make to correct this. To get the full picture, the author conducted 5 additional in-depth interviews with managers of the largest aggregators in Moscow and St. Petersburg to understand what decisions are made by them to solve existing problems among drivers, including ethical. During the research it was possible to find out peculiarities of Russian taxi market in comparison with other countries, unobvious problems of drivers that affect their lives, and solutions offered by aggregators. The main tendencies and trends for the future in the taxi market were also identified.