Introduction
Communication is a crucial process in the delivery of corporate messages and the response for individual needs, especially in an organization like the Walt Disney Company. Best known as Disney, the company is famous for its film, music, theater and the emergence of the diverse cultures. The Walt Disney World located in Orlando, Florida is the biggest entertainment studio where people’s “dreams come true”. Four theme parks, two water parks together with a large amount of resorts and golf clubs help to build the company’s identity and its cultural values successfully (Gabler, 2007). Within the Disney context, small units of the organization also perform their own characters, while still engaging in providing the classic Disney value.
This study focuses on one of Disney’s water parks – Typhoon Lagoon. Compared to the Blizzard Beach Water Park’s adventurous setting, Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon is a more relaxing yet fun-based Water Park. Its employees are trained and assigned into different operational teams such as Food and Beverage, Guest Services and Parking, Merchandise, Recreation and Life Guard. Study of the employees is narrowed down to the specific team – Quick Service Restaurant Food and Beverage (QSR F&B).
One of Disney’s specialties is the participation of the International College Program (ICP) students from all over the world. This not only brings a differently cultural-oriented diversity, but also creates problems such as the adaptation of those students from another culture. There are often cultural and task-oriented complexities in using communication to provide the best sense making solutions and to deliver the organizational culture. In Typhoon Lagoon QSR F&B, most of the ICP are from Thai...
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...ation Quarterly, 26(1), 106-132.
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This report attempts to examine the Walt Disney Company as an organization whose international operations play a vital role in the company’s continuing existence. This report seeks to present a review and analysis of the company’s global strategy by analyzing the key internal and external factors that impact on the company and how it has used alliances and acquisitions as part of its global strategy. As a human technology-intensive company, this paper seeks to understand how Disney was able to leverage its resources to create a competitive advantage. As an important aspect of its operations, relevant management issues are reviewed to see how it has affected the company’s global expansion strategy.
Also, it identifies furthermore other aspects around communication that we commonly don’t think of, for example; personal appearance. The way we display ourselves expresses volumes. Therefore, it also shapes our listening, and observation of what others are essentially communicating to us. You could be putting off nonverbal cues that symbolize something other than what you are essentially verbalizing. I will be utilizing this article for my research paper. I especially understood how it first broke everything down for myself, but there was a pure concept of understanding the material. I found this article tremendously
[1] Information was mainly taken from the Harvard Business Case Study “The Walt Disney Company: The Entertainment King”
Employees are stakeholders, because they help execute the organization’s mission and produce the services or products. Concern for the safety of the staff was a critical issue that SeaWorld had to address, since the situation involved the death of an employee. Since OSHA claimed that worker’s safety was not in accordance to certain codes and SeaWorld was plummeting in popularity, there were job security concerns as well. Organizations that ignore their employees as stakeholders negatively affect future hiring options, as it can make the organization appear unattractive as a job prospect. In this situation, SeaWorld needed to focus on alleviating the concerns of their
Welcome to the wonderful world of Disney: where your fantasy and dreams come to life. Disney was an idea created by the man himself, Walt Disney. He wanted to create a world where dreams can come true, which has cultivated a culture of disney fans over the web, on the television, on the radio, and in Disney parks. Additionally, Disney is such a widespread company that almost any Disney product can be found around the world. The movies, shows, even the children books created by Disney are well known. Books such as Understanding Disney written by Janet Wasko addresses the Disney company and the concept of happiness that it provides its many fans around the world. The culture of Disney is made from the happiness it brings people, but when the
This case provides a brief history of management conflict and change at Walt Disney Company. Former CEO Michael Eisner was considered to be controversial because of his abrasive style and tendencies toward micromanagement. It was this style that strained several important relationships to the Disney Company. Though his reign as CEO during the 80’s and 90’s helped advance Disney Company, it was his conflicting management style that led to his demise and the beginning of Robert Iger’s epoch at Disney. Since Iger has taken the helm as CEO Disney was ranked 67th in the Fortune 500 list for largest companies, it has become the largest media conglomerate in the world, and relationships and disputes stemming from Eisner have been reconciled.
Griffin, Emory A. (2009). Chapter 3: Weighing the Words. A first look at communication theory(7th ed., pp. 27-29). Singapore: McGraw-Hill Education (Asia).
One of the key factors of the successful diversification is the very strong branding of the name Disney. That the name was famous after the success in the early years made it among other things possible to go into the theme park industry. Evaluated isolated, the theme parks was a success. But when also accounting for the synergies created, the decision to go into this industry was a huge success. It has created a spiral of synergies, where the characters in the movies get more popular due to the parks, as well as the fact that when people are visiting the parks they get stimulated to buy the merchandise. This is just one example of the synergies that exist in Disney. When Michael Eisner took over control in Disney, he kept focusing on same corporate values as earlier, which are quality, creativity, entrepreneurialism and teamwork. These values have been preserved despite of the size of Disney, and are an important factor in sustaining and building the Disney brand.
The entertainment industry holds the immense potential for growth and development. The industry is constantly evolving and Walt Disney emerge as a global leader and recognized as the world’s second largest media conglomerate in the terms of revenue after Comcast. The Walt Disney Company is a multinational entertainment conglomerate headquartered at California, United States. The company integrated its products into five target segments are as follows: (1) Media Networks (2) Parks and Resorts (3) Walt Disney Studios (4) Disney Consumer Products (5) Disney Interactive. The company has strong diversified product portfolios and generate high returns and revenues from all the target segments but the media networks contributes
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Theories of Communications, is a course that allowed me to further gain a far better perspective and has also broadened my understanding and knowledge of some of the major theories. I appreciate the fact, that during the course of the semester, this class really did an admirable job introducing me to a variety of well known and widely studied theories in the communication feild. One of the biggest things I took out of this class, was how the class impled me to learn how to apply some of the theories to my life in a practical way through some of the class activities, readings, group work, presentations, and assignments. In the following paper, there will be three main things I will be covering. I will start off by introducing all members of my family, and describing a little bit about them individually. I will then be talking about the five theories I selected that I can applyto myself and my family. I will then describe each of the five theories, give an example of my own families experiance that aplies to the theories, and give an analysis of the experiance using the theory. And lastly, I will share with you my conclucion, which will conclude basically all of the things that I learned through writing this paper.
They include: excellence in leadership, excellence in casting, guest satisfaction, financial results, and repeat business (Coverly, 2013). As it pertains to leadership excellence, Walt Disney is cognizant of the fact that communication is indeed the key driver and foundation for a collaborative culture within the company. Therefore, in this regard, the company encourages the cultivation of collaboration by essentially creating an enabling environment where ideas are spoken without fear of favoritism. Hence, Walt Disney promotes the use of positive language as part of its strategy of fostering leadership and collaboration. The use of positive language lays a basis for the realization of excellence in casting as one of the company’s policies. It is necessary to note that according to Coverly (2013), Walt Disney does not refer to its staff as employees; rather, the company classifies them as casts within the whole business arena. This concept, as Coverly (2013) continues to elaborate, emanates from the cognizance by the company that each employee has an intrinsic and unique role to pay within the company. As such, it is more natural to refer to them as casts, rather than the traditional “employee” notation. This strategy is very influential in generating and sustaining employee motivation which stems
With the rapid growth in globalization there are a number of firms who have taken their businesses abroad. Their challenge, cross cultural management and communication. An effective communication strategy begins first with understanding who the sender of the message is and who the receiver of the message is. Many companies have realized this and offer training in the different cultures to help better facilitate communication between leaders (Cross-Cultural Communication, mindtools.com). Without this basic understand between sender and receiver it can be very difficult for companies of multicultural to even begin to communicate. The second important understanding is that leaders must demand a cultural tolerance of acceptable behavior between cultures to facilitate effective communication (Cross-Cultural Communication, mindtools.com).
Most successful firms spend millions on building a strong brand image. Disney must continue to expand the brand at every opportunity and keep the focus on its image. The creative energy of Walt Disney himself must exist throughout the organization. Disney can’t afford to lose its “magic” as the stakes are too high. So far, Disney is a textbook example of marketing genius. The mantra “Think local, act global” is a winning strategy for Disney since their product has a market all over the world. Everyone loves being entertained and escaping to a fantasy world every now and then.