Disney Case Study: The Smile Factory: Work At Disney

The Walt Disney Company has truly been “the entertainment king” in the 83 years since its founding. The success of Walt Disney Company is due to the struggle of two men. 1st man was the Walt Disney which gave the vision for this company and the 2nd person was Michael Eisner who used his strategic management skills for the success of this company and gave a innovative model due to which the company gain the many successes in the many years and still is a successful company in the word.

In this case, ever since Michael Eisner took over the company after the passing of the founder of Walt Disney and a number of ineffective Chief Executive Officers (CEO), the company has reached a high profits and search for monarchic power. Hence, this led to outstanding financial performance and he even expanded the theme parks. Moreover, the company has met the aim of the company which is to make the company successful by producing unique entertainment experiences of high quality and creativity.

“ Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first ” – by Simon Sinek, who is an author best known for popularizing the concept of "the golden circle” described by TED as "a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle” (Afshar, 2013). Sinek has brought an overview of an essential factor to all organization, which is organizational culture. It is the key to make a success of an organization, as well as the reflection of the company’s manager leadership. In this essay, the definition of organizational culture, how organizational culture can influence both the success and failure of an organization and what managers can do to create an encouraging and effective culture at workplace will be discussed.

The Walt Disney Company is one that provides a broad spectrum of goods and services, making it extremely unique. The company divides themselves into five main categories: Media Networks, Parks and Resorts, Walt Disney Studios, Consumer Products, and Disney Interactive. These five factions do different things from producing movies to running theme parks. The Walt Disney Company, an oligopoly as few firms exist with the same relevance in society, continues to prosper and have positive revenue in all recent annual reports. While costs of production may be extreme and expensive, The Walt Disney Company brings in major profit continuously. Holding a major share of the market, Disney is a very powerful and very relevant company.

When Walt Disney first opened the gates of Disneyland in 1955, he envisioned a utopian reality, where he focused on fulfilling dreams for both the young and young at heart, providing relief and comfort. Not only did he revolutionize family vacations, he believed that in hopes of creating a magical park would not only bring families together, but a place where parents and children could have fun together. As more elaborative and imaginative his park became, his creation had became a source of joy, happiness, with the hope that it would bring inspiration to the rest of the world. The Disney vision, Walt originally planned has completely transformed the leisure industry with its unique storytelling, continuing to captivate guests from all around the world.

Making a company as successful as Disney it takes a lot of concentration, creativity, willingness to take risks, technical ability and the ability to make decisions under a lot of pressure. These are

The Walt Disney Company is known throughout the world as a leader in entertainment. The strategies that the Walt Disney Company have used include competitive advantage, a growth strategy, and a renewal strategy. When a person mentions a theme park, Disney is the first park that comes to mind. They were not the first theme park, but they have mastered the art of creating memories for adults and children alike. As a former employee of Disney I can vouch for the amount of effort that goes into

The organizational culture can encourage or discourage effectiveness, depending on the nature of the values, beliefs, and norms” (Ivancevich, Konopaske, & Matteson, 2011). Organizational culture can be very friendly, very task oriented, competitive or driven to be highly productive or it can be disorganized and unproductive. The culture is based on the history of the company and the atmosphere that is created and nurtured over time. This culture guides the language the employees use their loyalty and many more areas. Organizational culture is an important social characteristic that influences organizations, group, and individual behavior with in a company (Hartnell, Ou, & Kinicki, 2011). The Culture of an organization affects the way people behave, how they address customers, the atmosphere, perception, values, and beliefs. Employee’s performance and effectiveness can also be determined by an organization’s culture. Every organization has its own culture based on shared expectations, values and attitudes and its influence on individuals and groups (Ivancevich et al., 2011). People inside of an organization have a big effect on the culture because of their values, beliefs, and ideology. Companies try to hire people who have the same values as the company so that they will fit into the organization. People stay with organizations that have a

It is always an enormous challenge when a business wants to expand internationally because of the need to be sensitive to a whole new market. I am sure that Disney Imagineer was used to dealing with Americans and cultures related to ours; expanding in Hong Kong was a whole new thing to them. If I oversaw the Disney Imagineer Corps I would have not done anything different relating to the integrating the Hong Kong traditions and culture within their parks. I honestly believe that the Imagineer Corps did a phenomenal job being aware of the tradition and wanting to integrate local traditions. Integrating the Feng Shui practice was a big plus because Feng Shui is philosophical system that the Chinese culture follows. It is the practice of locating

Organizational culture values like societal culture is what sets an organization apart from others. Organizational culture defines the organization as a unique entity. The managers and employees in an organization need to focus on their own culture in order to achieve their organizational goals. In Disney, the management knows that embracing a singular culture will definitely succeed in achieving company’s prosperity. Obviously, this strategy has worked very well.

Walt Disney is a very successful business. They believed that the theme park will be successful because the characters were well know and have been successful across the world. Although many across the world thought Mickey Mouse resembled the United States, Disney on the other hand thought the parks will do well because of representation and people came all over to be a part (Ferrell, Hirt & Ferrell, 2009).

An organization’s culture governs day to day behavior. This type of power may be seen as a control mechanism, which businesses use to manipulate internal and external perception. Every organization has a set of assumed understandings that must be adopted and implemented by new employees in order for them to be accepted. Conformity to the culture becomes the primary basis for reward by the organization. “The role of culture in influencing employee behavior appears to be increasingly important in today’s workplace, as organizations have widened spans of control, flattened structures, introduced teams, reduced

Organizational culture has been described as shared values and beliefs that underline a company’s identity. A strong culture that encourages employees from the top to the bottom in adaptation and change can increase organizational performance by energizing and motivating employees, shape behaviors, unify personnel in the goals / objectives and align employee’s actions with the priorities of the company (Daft, R., 2013). Creating a constructive culture should be a manager’s top priority because the right culture will propel a company into a top performer in its industry.

Culture play major role within the organization. It exists and plays a very crucial role in carving organization’s behavior. Organizational culture positively influences organizational behavior. People join number of organizations during their life. The organizations act as social tools to build the relationships between the individuals. Organizations are boundary maintaining, socially constructed and goal directed system, which focuses on the processes involved in the persistence, genesis and ethics of organizations. The individual will have to co-operate with the organization to achieve goals.

A strong positive organizational culture develops from employee awareness of the distinct differences between their company and other companies along with company mindfulness and embracing cultural diversity of its employees. As long as the organizational uniqueness of companies is positive, company pride among employees expands and improves the employees’ willingness to learn. Conversely, disinterested employees lack commitment to their company and lack desire to learn, making training more difficult.