FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT: THE ARTICLE

Looking Beneath the Surface of Your Company

The situation: You are a professional writer working for Teen Vogue Magazine and you are assigned to
write and design an article that reveals secrets of a famous company. Your audience is of course a group of
teenagers, but you are also trying to prove to your editor you can create beautiful and well-written layouts
for the magazine. That means that the design, font, colors and layout must fit the magazine and grab our
attention. The appearance is (almost) as important as the content. This project is investigative and creative.

The purpose of your article is to let your readers know the CSR of your chosen company. To do this
you will use analysis of your company’s choices from the perspective of a range of stakeholders.

Your writing can be no longer than 500 words and should fit the following outline:

a. Introduction - The Hook: here you will introduce your company and what it is known for. You will
also introduce your readers to your company ‘beneath the surface.’ What is CSR? What are the
three or four most important findings you discovered about your company when it comes to CSR?
Don’t discuss the details too much right now, just enough to make your reader interested in the rest
of the article. Don’t be afraid to use questions or surprising details. This is the ‘hook’ of your writing.

b. Body Paragraphs - CSR: Your article will have several body paragraphs. Each body paragraph will
tell your reader about something you researched about the company’s CSR. Be sure to discuss a
few different stakeholders. For example, does your company have a positive or negative effect on
the environment? How do you know? What about employees or consumers or the community? What
is your evidence? Your article should not only show the positive or negative aspects of your
company, you can show the CSR strengths and weaknesses in a balanced way. The best writing will
use specific events and evidence to support each of the points about CSR.

c. Conclusion - your takeaways: in your conclusion you will tell the reader how we should think about
the CSR of this company. Should we reconsider buying from this company? What changes does it
need to make? Why do you think we have not heard more about the CSR of the company?
Final Checklist: In addition to following the outline above, your article should:
★ Be printed on A3 paper with a split down the middle, as if it were a 2-page magazine spread.
○ Suggest using google docs to draft your work Canva, photoshop or indesign for layout
★ Include 3 or more engaging pictures that support and illustrate the points you write about.
★ Include an engaging title and maybe a subtitle - look at magazines for inspiration
★ Use subheadings, colors, fonts, and drop-quotes just like articles in Teen Vogue.
★ Be fully edited by a peer and adult and checked against this task-sheet and the rubric below.
★ Include sources on a separate page in MLA format.
★ Whether or not writing is our strength, then I strongly suggest using sentence starters found here.

Before starting your article you of course must complete the research first
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT: THE RESEARCH

The Formative Assessment will be based on your CSR analysis from the perspective of stakeholders and
on your research on your company. To help you prepare for the formative (and summative) assessment,
you should complete this basic questionnaire:

1. Name of Company: Disney

2. Current executive team (CEO, CFO, etc): Robert A. Iger, Bob Chapek, Alan Bergman, Alan
Braverman, Rebecca Campell, Jenny Cohen, Josh D’Amaro, Kareem Daniel, Carlos A. Gomez,
Alan F. Horn, Ronald L. Iden, Diane Jurgens, Nancy Lee, Christine M. McCarthy, Zenia Mucha,
Latondra Newton, James Pitaro, Peter Rice, Paul Richardson, Alicia Schwarz, Lowell Singer,
Brent Woodford (“Disney - Leadership, History, Corporate Social Responsibility”).

3. Summary of the company’s product or service and history of the company (2-3 sentences):
Disney is a company of which mission is to entertain, inform, and inspire people around the world
through the power of storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative
technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company (“Disney - Leadership,
History, Corporate Social Responsibility”).

*Cite:
“Disney - Leadership, History, Corporate Social Responsibility.” The Walt Disney Company,

2 Mar. 2020, thewaltdisneycompany.com/about/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2021.

BACKGROUND RESEARCH: Understand your company

To truly understand your company you need to research it from the perspective of a range of stakeholders.
For each of the stakeholders below, please find when your company treated this stakeholder very well with
their corporate decisions/action/behavior AND a time when they may have ignored
or harmed this stakeholder.

- The more research you complete now, the more prepared for your
formative assessment and summative debate you will be.
Minimum: one bullet point in each box.
- Make sure to include a link to your source after all points of research.
The company treated this stakeholder
in a positive way - be specific!
Employee A Disney business program facilitator
said that their motto is: “Treat employees
like customers.” He believed that
changing the workers’ experiences will
improve the customers’ experiences.
Under Disney, there is a tunnel for
employees and they said that the two
most important things are safety and
comfort.
https://blog.shrm.org/workplace/disney-
motto-treat-employees-like-customers
Environment In 2019, The Disney company said:
- They installed a solar facility at
Walt Disney World
- It reduces plastics from all of
Disney’s properties like hotels or
Disney Land by replacing straws
and in-room amenities
https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/
responsible-supply-chain/
https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/
environmental-sustainability/
Community Disney has helped seriously ill children in
hospital to provide them wishes to come
to Disney Land for free. Also, it supports
750 hospitals worldwide. Disney has
given 333.1 million dollars to non-profit
organizations.
https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/
childrens-hospitals-wish-granting/
https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/
charitable-giving/
Consumer They ensure that the consumers have No Source
healthy meals and live a healthy lifestyle
at Disney Land according to their
Nutrition Guideline Policy. They also
have a guideline for content posted for
marketing purposes on the internet. They
believe that their marketing content must
be suitable for all ages because children
will be the targeted customers.
https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/
content-products/
The company treated this stakeholder
in a negative way - be specific!
A survey sent out to 5,000 ‘cast members’
illustrated that 85% of Disneyland
employees are paid less than $15 an hour.
Even among full-time employees who
have worked at Disneyland for more than
15 years, 54% are paid less than $15 an
hour and 13% are paid less than $11 an
hour.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-
oe-dreier-flaming-disneyland-employee-
survey-20180228-story.html
According to the guardian, the writer thinks
that Disney is greenwashing its activities.
He said that Disney is promoting traveling
by cars and planes which cause and emit
a lot of CO2 into the environment. Also,
the writer said that according to research,
he found out that a large number of
visitors who visited America’s Disney Land
came from outside of the country. This
means that more CO2 is being produced.
https://www.theguardian.com/
environment/2009/mar/19/disney-
greenwash-fred-pearce
A writer believes that Disney’s movies
have bad influences on the way children
view the world. They think that those
movies shape the mind of children using
different characters in the movie. For
instance, the villains in movies are mostly
women like Maleficent or the evil queen. \
https://sundial.csun.edu/9674/archive/
thenegativeeffectsofdisneyonchildren/
CSR: SUM IT UP
In the space below, please summarize what you think about your
company’s corporate social responsibility. Use at least 3 quick
examples from the stakeholders above to support your
argument:
I think that Disney is not following the policies of CSR. Firstly,
according to surveys, 85% of Disneyland employees are paid
less than $15 an hour. Even among full-time employees who
have worked at Disneyland for more than 15 years, 54% are paid less than $15 an hour and 13% are paid
less than $11 an hour. Secondly, research shows that there are millions of customers from different places
around the world that flew to Disney to entertain which leads to the huge amount of CO2 emitting from
planes and vehicles. Finally, Disney’s movies are believed to have bad influences on children’s views. They
make children think of different stereotypes of different people.