Company’s Overview
Walt Disney is one of the biggest and diversified international companies in the entertainment and media industry. Its main offices are found in Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, although it has numerous offices all over the world. Since its inception in 1923 as a carton studio, it has expanded its business to be one of the world leaders in the animation, live-action film, television, and the travel industries. During its inception, it was called Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, but this was changed to Walt Disney Studio years later. Although it was a cartoon producing company during its start, after its incorporation in 1929 as Walt Disney Productions Limited, it expanded its business into the theatre, radio, music, and publishing industries. Some of its biggest companies include Walt Disney Studios, ABC Television Network, Disney Channel, ESPN, and numerous theme parks (Barrier, 2007, pp. 39-168).
Walt Disney Company’s Philosophy, Mission, Vision, and Values
The Growth of the Walt Disney Company to be what it is today is usually attributed to the ability of the company’s management to align its mission and vision to its philosophy and core corporate principles. Its adherence to its main philosophy of ensuring that it offers its clients world-class family entertainment services that focus on children, teens, and adults have dramatically helped it to expand its business globally. This philosophy is closely connected to its mission of aiming to be one of the world’s principal creators and providers of amusement and information, using its range of brands to make its content, services, and consumer goods inimitable. All these are done in an endeavor to come up with the most innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products globally. In addition to this, its simple vision of aiming to make people happy has always helped it to formulate unique and innovative products to meet new customer demands, as it appreciates the significance of its customers. On the other hand, its values of embracing consistency and detail, respect, bravery, sincerity, diversity, and always aiming to maintain its image play a central role in all its strategic plans. To maintain a cohort of specialized workers, this business giant also insists on the need to encourage learning and development and embracing of different cultures (Aswathappa & Dash, 2008, pp.85-106 and Eisner, 2003, pp. 137-184).
Structure of the Company
This business giant has four primary divisions, namely the media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, and finally, the consumer goods division. The media section primarily deals with any programs that are related to television and radio. Some of the leading enterprises that are under this are Radio Disney, ABC Television, ESPN, and Disney Channel. Different from this, the parks and resorts section deals with all the entertainment amenities that are in the U.S.A, for example, Walt Disney World Resort, the ESPN Zones, and the Disneyland Resort.
On the other hand, the studio entertainment section handles all the production, marketing, and supply of all types of films. At the same time, the consumer products division is mandated with the role of providing Disney’s characters, producers, publishers, and sellers licenses. To make sure that all these sections work in unison, this company has a CEO who is also the president. The president is helped by different managers who head either corporate units that are run by the company or business units, which are typically found at Disney’s branches. Although its groups are independent of each other, they depend on each other; hence, from time to time, all the top managers and corporate management have to meet and share (Denney & Williams, 19-77).
Reference List
Aswathappa, K., & Dash, S. (2008). International Human Resource Management: Test and Cases. New Delhi: The Tata McGraw Publishing Company.
Barrier, M. (2007). The Animated Man: A life of Walt Disney. London: California University Press.
Denney, Jim & Williams, Pat. (2004). How to be like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every day of your life. Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications, Inc.
Eisner, M. (2003). Be our Guest: Perfecting the art of Customer Service. New York:Disney Press.