POM CIA-1

on
MANAGEMENT APPROACH OF A COMPANY

A Report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Business Administration

By
Anchal Dugar- 2127535
Under the Guidance of
Prof. Saba Fatma

MBA PROGRAMME
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
CHRIST (DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY), BANGALORE
AUGUST 2021
 Contents
INTRODUCTION TO THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY...............................................................................3
CHARTARESTICS OF THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY..............................................................................4
MANAGEMENT THEORIES.....................................................................................................................6
VOILATION & NEW SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT PRACTICE..................................................................8
CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................................................9
References...........................................................................................................................................10
 INTRODUCTION TO THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY

The Walt Disney Company is a diversified

worldwide entertainment company with operations in the following business segments:

1. Media Networks; Parks, Experiences, and Products

2. Studio Entertainment
3. Direct-to-Consumer & International (DTCI)
The Walt Disney Company was founded in 1923 in the back of a modest Los Angeles office
leased by Holly-Vermont Realty. Walt Disney and his brother Roy created the ALICE
COMEDIES, a collection of short live-action/animated films since then. He was the
originator of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, animated version of Snow White.

His animations caught everyone’s eyes and soon his business grew. The company slowly
ventured into different entertainment segment like movies, cartoons, parks, studio,
merchandise, etc.

The company currently has hundered of subsidiaries all around the world under it all working
in different entertainment segments. Some of the subsidiaries include:
1. Marvel Studios Mr. Walt Disney, founder of Disney
2. Pixar
3. Fox Entertainment Group
4. National Geographics
5. ESPN
 6. 20th Century Studios

And, with all of its ups and downs over the years, the company recovered, and it is today one
of the largest production houses and entertainment providers in recent history as well as in
the past. Now, there revenue is around $6.5 billion as in the year 2020. Currently the
company is headquartered in Burbank, California, United States.

Vision of the company:

“To be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and
information.”

Mission of the company:

“To entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled
storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds, and innovative technologies that
make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.”

Walt Disney’s 4 core concepts:

“To Dream”, “To Believe”, “To Dare” and “To Do”.

CHARTARESTICS OF THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY

Organisational Structure:

The Walt Disney Company is organised in a cooperative multidivisional (M-form)

organisational structure that prioritises business types. In diverse businesses, a multidivisional
or M-form organisational structure is typical. Disney utilises the cooperative M-form
business structure in this company study example. Constrained diversity is a feature of the
cooperative M-form. Interdivisional advantages. In addition, the company's corporate
headquarters has a strong centralization strategy that involves functional groupings.
In the worldwide mass media, entertainment, and amusement park sectors, such centralization
is a structural element that provides strong management control over diverse expansion.
Disney's corporate structure has the following major characteristics:

1. Business-Segments
Business
Segment

Interactive Studio Consumer Parks & Media

Media Entertainment Products Resorts Networks
2. Functional Groups
Disney's functional groups are a structural organisational feature that allows for the
corporate consolidation of strategic management authority across the international
corporation. The company's organisational structure provides successful strategic
growth coordination across the business-type divisions or segments in this way.
Through centralized control, Disney's corporate headquarters prioritize strategies that
benefit multiple divisions.
 For example, characters from new movies (Studio Entertainment segment) are used
in the company’s Disneyland amusement parks (Parks and Resorts segment) and
merchandise (Consumer Products & Interactive Media segment). Such cooperation is
possible through the functional groups in this corporate structure. 

3. Geographical Divisions
This attribute of Disney’s organizational structure addresses variations among local,
domestic and regional markets. Such variations are based on geographic factors that
affect the mass media, entertainment, and parks and resorts industries. The Walt
Disney Company’s corporate structure enables strategic management to address
market variations through the following geographical divisions:
1. United States and Canada
2. Europe
3. Asia Pacific
4. Latin America and Other
Organisation Culture:

The Walt Disney Company is home to more than 203,000 employees as on October, 2020.
The Company's core human capital management aims are to attract, retain, and develop high-
quality individuals. The Company's human resources programmes are designed to achieve
these goals by: developing talent to prepare them for future critical roles and leadership
positions; rewarding and supporting employees through competitive pay, benefit, and
perquisite programmes; improving the Company's culture through efforts to make the
workplace more engaging and inclusive; acquiring talent and facilitating induction; and
acquiring talent and facilitating induction.

MANAGEMENT THEORIES

Management theories are a collection of ideas that provide fundamental rules for running a
business or organisation. Management theories examine how managers devise plans to meet
company objectives and motivate employees to perform at their best.

Management Theories applied in The Walt Disney Company

Classical Management
1. Theory of Scientific Management:

Taylor's scientific management theory aims to increase economic efficiency,

particularly worker productivity. Taylor had a straightforward perspective on what
motivated individuals at work: money. He believed that employees should be paid
fairly for a fair day's labour, and that compensation should be proportional to output.
As a result, he established the differential piece rate method for paying workers'
wages.
 In The Walt Disney Company, this theory of management was used long before by
Mr. Walt Disney and Mr. Michael Eisner. The operations of Disney's "happiest place
on earth" are an example of scientific management; they have monitors hanging
above them like scoreboards, with employees' labour speeds compared to one another.
The productivity of many Disney employees is assessed in percentages. At Disney,
Scientific Management is utilised to track staff productivity to ensure that they are
working to their greatest capacity.

2. Bureaucratic Theory

Mr. Max Weber created the bureaucratic theory. It claims that using a bureaucratic
structure will make an organisation more efficient. Weber's ideal company organises
itself using regular norms and processes. This technique, he felt, was particularly
beneficial for huge enterprises.

This management theory has been followed in the Walt Disney Company since the
beginning. Mr. Walt Disney was the first one to follow Bureaucratic Theory, where he
laid down all the rules and responsibilities of all the employees. All the employees were
divided into categories based on team’s expertise and competencies. The company had a
proper hierarchical structure, where all the authority and decision-making power rested in
the hand of the upper management and people in the lower management had no power at
all. The similar kind of management behaviour was followed by Mr. Michael Eisner.

Behaviour Management Theory

In the recent decade, The Walt Disney Company is the perfect example of using Behaviour
Management Theory. This theory, often called the human relations theory, focuses on
employee’s behaviour at work and how it can put to use in increasing motivation, and
productivity.

The Walt Disney Company mostly follows Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. According to this
theory, he believed that humans have never-ending wants and are never satisfied. Therefore,
he put a hierarchical structure of importance- Psychological Needs, Safety Needs, Belonging
and Love needs, Esteem Needs and Self- Actualisation.

After reading annual reports and certain articles, The Walt Disney company fulfils them by:

 They created six pillars - openness, accountability, representation, content,

community, and culture - as the cornerstone for their D&I commitments.
 Through initiatives like the Executive Incubator, Creative Talent Development and
Inclusion (CTDI), and the Disney Launchpad: Shorts Incubator, they built a pipeline
of next-generation creative leaders from underrepresented backgrounds.
 Over 70 employee-led Business Employee Resource Groups (BERGs) that reflect and
assist the different groups that make up their workforce were sponsored by the
 company. The BERGs help with peer networking, outreach and mentorship,
leadership and skill development, and cross-cultural business innovation.
 Disney's benefit packages are tailored to the changing demands of a diversified
workforce across industries and regions. They improved the ways they can help their
workers care for themselves and their families because they want their employees and
their families to flourish.
 They encourage their hourly employees to pursue long-term career goals through
education and personal development. They cover the expenses of tuition at a network
of institutions and strive to assist its hourly employees achieve their career objectives
by providing them with degree programmes, mentoring, and job skills tailored to the
needs of a fast changing industry and workforce.
 Through a variety of training and development initiatives, they prioritise and invest in
generating chances for workers to grow and improve their careers. Online, instructor-
led, and on-the-job learning methods, as well as executive talent and succession
planning combined with a customised development strategy, are all examples.

MANAGEMENT APPROACHES

Contingency Approach

The situational method, often known as the contingency approach, is founded on the idea that
all management is basically situational. The variables of a particular scenario will influence
(if not dominate) all managerial actions. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to any problem.
Contingencies occur as a result of a variety of external circumstances. As a result, while
making decisions that influence the company, managers must consider these possibilities.

In the Walt Disney Company, this approach has been in use for quite a decade by the ex-CEO
Mr. Iger

VOILATION & NEW SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT

PRACTICE

There were quite a few violations in The Walt Disney Company. One such example was the
management style adopted by Mr. Michael Eisner. He has been charged of micromanaging
and operating a "repressive regime." This is an odd course of action in a company culture that
values innovation and free thought, as well as their worldwide success in bringing
imagination and wonderful stories to life. Eisner maintained decision-making unilateral and
up to the top executives in a very centralised way. Employees were being kept out of critical
decision-making, and they were noticing how much their board members, shareholders, and
chief executive were vying for authority in decision-making. Morale was claimed to be
deteriorating.
Hence, soon he was replaced by Mr. Robert Iger who reached Disney to a whole new level.
The current Management Style followed by Disney to overcome this is Value Based
Management by McKinsey. It is all about leading, managing, and working in organisations
that create value is what value driven management is all about. VDM lays a philosophical and
intellectual basis for how to think about organisations, how to function in one, and how to
view oneself as a leader, decision-maker, and value generator in an organisational setting
(Pohlman and Gardiner, 2000). The objective of VDM is to evaluate the relevant values of
many various stakeholders while making decisions, such as: (1) external cultural values, (2)
organisational cultural values, (3) individual employee values, (4) consumer values, (5)
supplier values, and so on. Due to this, Disney’s reached new heights and employees felt
better working in such an environment. The company could even reach their mission and
vision with this management style.

CONCLUSION

So far, this literary trip has taken readers from the American Industrial Revolution to Europe
to meet Weber and Fayol, then back to the United States to meet Follett, only to travel back
in time to meet the founders of market-based and value-driven management. What amazing
journey, reminiscent of a Disney theme park interactive ride! The positive and bad aspects of
both management views have been emphasised, analysed, and dissected.
The background utilised to illustrate how all of these techniques were employed in real-world
current scenarios was Walt Disney's business colossus. Michael Eisner, the company's most
senior executive, was praised for taking a more administrative approach to management,
which Taylor, Weber, and Fayol would have liked. Current CEO Robert Iger, on the other
hand, takes a more open systems approach, which Follett and those who pioneered market-
based and value-based management would have admired.
 References
 Patterson, S., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2014). Historical and Modern Management Practices
Applied at Disney World: Out with the Old and in with the New? International Journal of
Management Research and Emerging Sciences, 75-96.

 https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/about/
 https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company
 http://panmore.com/walt-disney-company-organizational-structure-synergistic-diversification

 The Walt Disney Company – Form 10-K.

 https://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumCapodagliJackson99.htm
 https://sites.google.com/site/consultingservicesinfo/topics/leadership/walt-disney-leadership-
style
