The Strategy of the Euro Disney Term Paper

Strategy as Design

The lens displays that strategy growth is a practice that encompasses logical insinuations. The cautious assessment is done in regards to the firm’s environment, industry and resources available. The strategy used is optimal and has a plain track that can be specified. The strategic procedure therefore emphasis on analysis-selection-implementation procedure.

Primary to the analysis is accountability which supports strategy growth to ensure it remains within the top management and also recommends that they are able to choose the optimal strategy with regards to the business.

Disney managed close control with regards to the design and construction of Phase 1A of Euro Disney. Lehrer McGovern Bovis Inc., a construction management firm that possesses some considerable independence, and has international experience in the management of constructions projects which are on a large scale, was their chief constructor. LMB gave reports to Euro Disney Imagineering SARL (EDLI), which was a French constituent of Disney, and was charged with the overall responsibility of designing and constructing the two phases, 1 and 2, of the theme park. Other separate Disney companies also reported to EDLI remained majorly charged with the responsibility of conceptual, design and engineering and developing and equipping of attractions.

Participants played a vital role in marketing and financial dimensions by entering into long-term and short-term marketing agreements. Each participant paid personally decided annual fees, often contributing to funding a specific facility or attraction. The participants which were evident at Disney initially were Banque Nationale de Paris, Renault, European and Kodak. The challenges experienced due to bad weather conditions were major in the category of technical and amenable to cautious analysis. In fact, the issues with regards to culture proved far much less tractable¹.

Disney had cartoon characters that were strongly familiar to the Japanese people and hence visitors wanted real things attracting minor changes like the addition of Cinderella’s Castle and the Mickey Mouse Theater.

Strategy as Ideas

The analysis stipulates strategy as a procedure that emanates from inside an organization and asserts that it is predisposed by the surrounding. It is often seen as a ‘bottom up’ approach and that which needs organizational customs allowing the employees in entirety to experience an ability to articulate their thoughts. Some organizations like Euro Disney aggressively encouraged human resources to engender ideas with, particularly assigned time.

In the context of the case study, Disney gained its success from the careful control of its environment providing a unique experience for the visitor. Disney used operations management and human resources which were highly systematized. It crafted systematic procedures with regards to employee training which guaranteed them excellence in services, safety and maintenance in the industry.

Disney could evidently reconcile increased occupancy bearing great services which were ranked first-class and encompassed customer satisfaction usually achieved by the use of complicated methods of projecting visitor levels every day. Besides, there was a careful design of parks that helped reduce the frustrations of crowds and waiting.

The organization also emphasizes the constant renewal as regards its theme parks’ appeal by investing in new attractions and ventures, mainly through intensive promotional mechanisms.

Strategy as Discourse

The view encompasses making a variety of choices from amongst diverse possibilities whilst creating an inspiration of confidence with regards to the taken choice. The view usually accommodates a high sense of legitimacy and conversely a stumpy innovation and rationality². Strategy as discourse stipulates strategy development in the pretext of language being a resource used by managers to communicate, explain and sustain a strategy, and that which managers use to gain power, influence and institute their authority in the context of strategists.

Disney crafted a meticulous approach to recruitment, affirmed its commitment to employee training and the maintenance of serious standards of behavior by employees. The top management communicated this through the employee handbook which clearly stipulated that employees should have been pleasantly dressed all the time, poses conservative grooming standards, have modest makeups with rare jewelry, above average height and good weight and that employees could put on particular colors and types of inner wears.

Training is exposed to encompass general principles bearing particular knowledge and behaviors with regards to employees.

Robert Fitzpatrick laid a major emphasis as regards the company’s determination to ensure the provision of the highest-ranked services and products at Disney, which later became evident in the furnishings, cuisine and service demands of the hotels.

Strategy as Experience

The majority of sources and advocates of this Strategy as Experience, including Henry Mintzberg, often stipulated that the design lens reflected a lot of inaccuracy due to the fact that top-level managers proved more of a distance with regards to the daily growth of the organization. Mintzberg indicates that strategic development is supposed to be adaptive and divisive into proposed, achieved and surfacing strategies.

Here, strategic development is seen as the constant adaptation regarding precedent strategies through experience. The view stipulates that strategy is extensively determined by assumptions and cultures often taken for granted and includes hefty extents of compromise and bargaining. Strategy as Experience brings with some degree of risk often called strategic drift due to the failure to take action on ecological changes by being excessive ‘path dependent’ on historic activity.

Euro Disney had a unique financial and management culture where instead of a pure franchise operation similar to Tokyo Disneyland. Therefore European investors own the majority and the respective banks to provide the greatest percentage of debts financing.

Disney had an enthusiastic experience with the Japanese while France presented a totally different experience. The France people showed a lot of resistance to American popular culture. The clients of Disney made assumptions from the perceptions they built of Euro Disney from the majority praises that it was a fantastic place and this enhanced its thrive. Euro Disney’s opening attracted protests but by use of entertainers and television, and also a claim by Michael Eisner that Euro Disney was among the greatest man-made attractions in the world; and also for the fact that the prime minister’s description of the park as an incredible achievement transcending national boundaries, made it manage an upswing in the number of visitors³. The rising concern over European aversion with regards to queuing led to the provision of movies, video screens and other sources of entertainment mainly preserved for guests who had queued in line for services.

Disney also adapted to a culture of no alcohol and they did the adjustment by allowing beer and wine to get served at Festival Disney which was one of the entertainment complexes located immediately outside the theme park. The park adapted to a culture of laying increased emphasis on sit-down dining and far much less on fast food.

References

Grant, R. 2005. ‘Euro Disney-From Dream to Nightmare 1987-94’. Case Study. pp. 279-307.

Johnson, G., Scholes, K & Whittington, R. 2008. Exploring Corporate Strategy. Upper-Saddle-River, Prentice Hall.

Maanen, V & Westney, E. 1999. Organizational Behavior and Process. Cincinnati, Southwestern College Publishing.

Footnotes

1. Johnson, G., Scholes, K & Whittington, R. 2008. Exploring Corporate Strategy. Upper-Saddle-River, Prentice Hall.
2. Grant, R. 2005. ‘Euro Disney-From Dream to Nightmare 1987-94’. Case Study. pp. 279-307.
3. Maanen, V & Westney, E. 1999. Organizational Behavior and Process. Cincinnati, Southwestern College Publishing.