...Control Mechanism: Walt Disney Company Whitney Leung Tony Saludas Wendy Sanchez Jim Stickell MGT 330 Jack Land “The management function of monitoring performance and making needed changes” is control (Bateman). Control is the fourth and final function that completes the management process and will help guarantee success in an organization. This process will help management ensure that an organization’s will use all necessary resources to achieve their goals effectively and efficiently. The Walt Disney Company and their associated offices have continuously over the years committed to produce creative entertainment experiences made for every family across the world. Today, this major corporation is split into four different business segments in the following categories: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, and consumer products. (The Walt Disney Company) Since founded in 1923, The Walt Disney Company use control mechanism to maintain regulated guidelines and procedures to achieve their goals effectively and efficiently. This paper will examine, and compare and contrast four types of control mechanisms the Walt Disney Company used: (1) budgetary controls, (2) marketing control, (3) bureaucratic control cycle, and (4) management audits to determine the effectiveness of each by examining the positive and negative reactions to these controls in order to explain how these control mechanisms affect the four function of management. Budgetary...
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...public limited company can grow through the process of either organic growth or internal growth or through the process of merger and acquisition. In the following pages two different public limited companies listed in the United States are taken. One of the animation companies has international exposure and a history of merger and acquisition and other solely operating in USA with no history of merger and acquisition. Discussion Walt Disney Company which is commonly known as Disney is an American diversified multinational company that is headquartered at Walt Disney studio in Burbank California. In terms of revenue the company is largest in the world. The business was established by Disney brothers namely Walt and Roy Disney in the year 1923. The company was a leader in the animation industry before it diversified into other ventures. Pixar on the other hand was formed in 1979 by George Lucus and his recruit Ed Catmull. The company was renamed as Pixar when Steve Jobs acquired majority stake in the company in the year 1986. After the demise of Walt and Roy Disney the company lost the initial success that it had with animation films. It was in this time that a series of animation films that were produced by the company did not farewell at the box office and the company suffered losses. On the other hand Pixar’s computer division was also suffering string of losses and the company was about to go bankrupt. This led to the animation department of the company producing animated...
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...The Walt Disney Company: The Entertainment King Starting as a young boy from Missouri, farmer Walter Elias Disney set out to make a mark on society. After first joining the Red Cross in World War I, he came back determined to be an artist. After moving to Hollywood in 1923 with his older brother Roy, they founded Disney Brothers Studio. After diversifying as much as possible, Disney had a firm grasp on the global market share until the 1980’s where the company’s revenues began to slump in the film industry. Luckily Sid Bass invested $365 million in order to rescue the company and bring an end to all hostile takeover attempts. Disney’s billion dollar powerhouse status in the entertainment industry can be broken down and analyzed using the McKinsey’s 7S model. This model can be applied to Disney to analyze the company’s management and strategic policies. The McKinsey 7S model covers important strategic areas of operation including, strategy, structure, systems, style, skills, staff, and shared values. These seven elements need to be aligned and mutually reinforcing so that the model can be used to help identify what needs to be realigned in order to improve performance or to maintain alignment and performance. Disney Corporation has a hugely diversified strategy, that is to say, the plan devised to maintain and build competitive advantage over the competition. In 1928, after creating and losing the Oswald franchise to his distributor, Walt used a technique new to the animated...
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...The Walt Disney Company is the world’s largest amusement park operator. It was founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Taking on its current name Disney in 1986. Chapter 1: Case – Disney Theme Park Contents I. Case Background 1 II. Statement of the Problem 3 III. Alternatives 3 IV. Recommended Solution 3 V. Answers to the case questions 4 Question No. 1: 4 Question No. 2: 4 Question No. 3: 5 Question No. 4: 5 VI. Leanings 5 I. Case Background The Walt Disney Company is the world’s largest amusement park operator. It was founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Taking on its current name Disney in 1986. And Disney has 5 theme parks outside the USA; there are Tokyo Disneyland (1983), Tokyo DisneySea (2001), Disneyland Paris (1992), Hong Kong Disneyland (2005) and Walt Disney Studios (2002). Disney is motivated to set up parks throughout the world to expand its sales of merchandise goods as well as attendance to their theme parks. After lunched Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005, Disney has signed a letter of intent to build another park in Shanghai China in 2008; The Park will attract different potential visitors in Shanghai. Overview Disney Theme Park - Points of Interest (Michael Sandberg's Data Visualization Blog) Getting people excited about their data one visual at a time * Walt Disney had infinite confidence in his new park and unapologetically...
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...Disney Financial Statement ACC/300 March 16, 2015 Prof Brandy Havens Disney Financial Statement Debt and Investments The Walt Disney Company reported debt in a number of ways on their financial statements. The first place debt securities are shown is under Current Liabilities on the Consolidated Balance Sheet. The Current Portion of Borrowings, at $2,342 billion, lists that portion of debt that is due to be paid within the next year. The second place that debt appears on the Consolidated Balance Sheet is under Borrowings. Disney shows over $12.676 billion in long-term debt. Therefore, Disney’s total borrowings are approximately $14.8 billion. Upon further analysis, nearly 92% of Disney’s debt includes the issuance of U.S. medium-term notes with a weighted-average coupon rate of 2.73% and maturities that occur from 2015 through 2023. Additionally, Disney indicates another $5.9 billion in other long-term liabilities. According to Disney’s 10k filing, “Other long-term borrowing instruments are omitted pursuant to Item 601(b)(4)(iii) of Regulation S-K. The Company undertakes to furnish copies of such instruments to the Commission upon request” (The Walt Disney Company. 2014). The balance sheet also shows Investments as part of the reporting of Assets. For the fiscal year ended 2014, Disney reported $2.696 billion in investments. Nearly 92% of the investments are shown as “Equity Basis” investments. More specifically, Disney reports that the equity investments...
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...Strategic Initiative Paper "Disney" Marquita Lacy-Polk, Diana Dorsey, Kim Jenkins, Joshua Snooks FIN/370 January 29, 2014 Strategic Initiative Paper "Disney" Disney has grown exponentially to become a household name and a global leader in the industry of family entertainment. Shortly after as a small cartoon company, Ellas Disney, founder of Walt Disney grew the Disney Corporation into something that no one could have imagined. Ellas Disney was always known for his innovation and abilities and still reminiscent today as it was in the 1920s. The company attributes are a majority of and to the success that they have built. In order for organizations to be successful and to survive requires planning for the future, with creative ideas and motivated personnel with an open mind and a strong drive. Two essential business functions are financial and strategic planning, with the great success that Walt Disney has accomplished, then till now there are still financial impacts and risks that still should be considered when making certain decisions when it comes to the company. In this paper our team will be discussing in more detail the current strategic initiatives and the possible new initiatives that Disney has in play, along with the financial impacts and the risk of putting those decisions into effect. The Walt Disney’s annual reports are very important when it comes to strategic and financial planning because it provides a variety of financial information which is helpful...
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...The Walt Disney Company’s Organizational Structure MGT/230 Management Theory and Practice Organizational structure The Walt Disney Company’s organizational structure looks most like a horizontal structure. Horizontal structure is based on departmentalization or subdividing the organization into subunits (Bateman & Snell, 2011). The Disney Company has five business segments: interactive media, studio entertainment, consumer products, parks and resorts, and media networks. These departments are grouped by product which is a great example of the divisional approach. Each product is closely related to the other as they all are about entertainment in one form or another, but they do still have their own descriptions. The interactive media segment uses digital media to create high-quality interactive entertainment since it was founded in 2008. The studio entertainment segment is a segment on which the company was built. Stage plays, music, and movies are brought to people everywhere through this segment. The consumer products segment brings engaging and innovative product experiences from clothing and toys to fine art and books to the public. Millions of guests each and every year take the opportunity to spend their vacations and making memories at one of the world’s leading providers of leisure and family travel experiences, at a Walt Disney park or resort. The media networks segment is made up of various cable, broadcast, publishing, and radio businesses over...
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...The Walt Disney Company Assignment 1: Assignment 1: Strategic Management And Strategic Competitiveness Professor: BUS 499: Business Administration Capstone April 20th, 2014 The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company started in October 16, 1926. It was at the time known as The Disney Brothers Studio. It was established by Roy and Walt Disney. The company rapidly began to expand and introduced the world to Mickey and Minnie Mouse. They are the image of the Disney Company. During the 1940’s Disney issued its first stock, this made it growth as a company. The Disney Company expanded to the world of television and written entertainment with the opening of a theme park. Disneyland was opened on July 17, 1955. Walt dream was to open different theme parks in a big area. He chose Florida because of the nice weather; the inexpensive land; and the interstate 4. Unfortunate, Walt Disney, died on December 15, 1966. Despite the loss of Walt, Disney Company continued to grow. And in October of 1971, Walt Disney World Resort opened in Orlando, Florida. (Disney History) Globalization and technology changes have impacted The Walt Disney Company in positive way. According to Strategic Management, “globalization is the increasing economic interdependence among countries and their organizations as reflected in the flow of goods and services, financial capital and knowledge across country borders.” ( Hitt, Ireland & Hoskisson, 2013). Globalization also increases the amount...
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...their different segments : Since most of the people are online 24/7, Disney’s website is a great way to endorse their product offerings, they should also improve their search engine to give easy access to their products and services, they could also develop their website in other languages to help their global consumers understand their products and services. Conclusion One of the growth strategies that have helped the company to reach its current level of success is the fact that the organization has expanded, both vertically and horizontally, into new markets by targeted segmentation. Furthermore, it is only through the diversification in branding that Disney has grown simply because the children’s brand is comparatively limited in terms of the target demographic. It is also the same diversity that minimizes the systemic risk involved with operating in too narrow of a portfolio. Space matrix Strategic position and action evaluation (SPACE) matrix is a management tool used for analyzing the company It can also be used to determine what sort of strategy the company should undertake . The space matrix is broken down into four quadrants as being aggressive , conservative , defensive and competitive. Additionally , the Space matrix analysis functions upon to internal strategic dimensions which are financial strength(FS) and competitive advantage (CA) Besides , the Space matrix methodology also studies two business, external strategic dimensions such as environmental stability and industry...
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...Disney’s global expansion – An Asia Perspective Executive Summary Disney theme parks had a long history of aggressive market expansion, started first with their first Disneyland opened in Anaheim in July 1955, Disney World Florida 1971, Disney theme park in Tokyo in 1992, and Disneyland Paris in France (Tsai & Liu 2011). Since introduction of its first theme park, Disney has been attaining global profit through expanding their existing parks while entering the new territories. Their ventures into the new Asia market, HongKong, met great hurdles and challenges as there were gaps between Hong Kong Disneyland offer and the local customs that need to undergo urgent local adjustments in order to become accepted among the Chinese and Hong Kongers. Although major changes have addressed incompatibility issues which in turn provided Disney with high profits and competitive advantages, the park faced serious problems including the frequent overcrowded flow of customers, the lacks of creativity and innovation, or the overloaded staff. As HongKong Disneyland has proved fairly successful with increased park occupation and revenues from growth especially from mainland China sector (Matusitz 2011, Tsai & Liu 2011, Zhang 2007), an unexplored market segment in China or in particular the chosen Shanghai catched Disney’s full attention along with many favored factors such as supported environment with lower cost of labor and materials (PR 2011, Schmidt et al. 2007). The decision to expand the...
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...Abstract The Walt Disney Company has been able to gain recognition and is known across the world through its Disney movies like The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, The Incredibles and Finding Nemo just to name a few. The company was also able to make a name for itself through amusement parks and resorts, cruise lines, merchandise and media networks. Throughout this paper we will take a look at the company’s life cycle, competitive forces against its competitors through a SWOT analysis, we’ll also be taking a look at the company’s financial data and historical trend. From there, we will determine whether the Walt Disney Company is a good company to invest in or whether one should sell their stock or hold. Walt Disney Company was founded by two brothers, Walt and Roy Disney in 1923, as a child Walt was always drawing, he used it as a way to escape from the world. His first successful cartoon was a reel by the name of Alice Comedies. But it wasn’t until 1928 when Walt began to see real success, and he owed it all to a cartoon character that up to this day is world renown; Mickey Mouse, previously known as Mortimer Mouse. Mickey Mouse made his first appearance through cartoon by the name of Steamboat Willie. With the success of this cartoon, Walt was able to venture forth and develop full length motion pictures. His first one being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As time went on, Disney continued to venture out and invest in new territories outside of...
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...Annual Report Analysis | The Walt Disney Company (DIS) | | Introduction In order to make the right investment decision, one must analyze the company of their interests. It is not wise to invest money on a company that is not doing well within their industry. On the other hand, if companies want your investments they must provide accurate, substantial evidence to show that you will make the right investment if you invest in them. Therefore, publicly traded companies publish their financial statements in their annual reports which investors can analyze use to make an investment decision. The Walt Disney Company is an entertainment company that is well known worldwide. The company was founded in Burbank, California in 1923 and became a public traded company in the 1950’s. The Walt Disney Company reports earnings on a quarterly and annual basis with their fiscal year ending on the first business day in the month of October of ever year. The company recently released their “Fiscal Year 2011 Annual Financial Report and Shareholder Letter,” which provides the company’s financial statement. With the annual report provided by the company and the analysis techniques learned from this course and other supporting evidence to analyze the financial position of The Walt Disney Company and determine if in fact the company would be a good investment option. Auditors’ Opinion The Walt Disney Co. auditors are PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, an independent registered public accounting...
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...be the essence of Disney, even as our businesses expand across borders and media platforms, it is the foundation for almost everything we do, the source of our strength and our success, and the fuel that will power us into the future” - Robert Iger, President and CEO - When we hear the word Disney, what is the first think that comes up in our minds? Most people think about Disney and relate it to magical, exciting and large attractions parks and hotels, and the famous Mickey Mouse. However, they missed to see how big and influential this organization really is. Walt Disney Company is one of the World largest communications organizations. Everyone knows Disney! It is everywhere in our lives, from TV, radio and movies, to parks, clothing, accessories and toys. Owning diverse media markets, Disney has build a tradition of culture and niche by efficiently managing its markets and products, allocating them among different cultures, age groups and preferences. In this report I will be analyzing some of the major managerial decisions within the Company, its influences over the market and the way it has established across the years in our culture. We are now about to discover all the financial numbers, facts, operational activities and responsibilities of the Walt Disney Company, the “Happiest Celebration in World.” Let the Magic of Disney to begin… A Little Bit of History Walter Elias Disney founded the Walt Disney Company in 1923 as a dream...
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...The Walt Disney Company Financial Accounting Project Progress Report 2 8am M, W, Th Yuli Tang Wei Wang Tianda Xu Rui Zhang Profitability: In 2011, the profit margin of Walt Disney Company was 0.1176(11.76%). Due to the company’s huge net sales value, it shows a solid profit margin for a large company just as Walt Disney. In 2010, the profit margin was 0.1041(10.41%), which was 1.35% lower than 2011. The higher profits margin rate in 2011 indicates that the profit margin will increase in the future. Furthermore, the Walt Disney’s return on equity was 0.129(12.9%) in 2011, and the return on equity was 2.9% higher than the previous year, which showed that the Walt Disney keep steady profitability. Compared to its competitor DreamWorks Animation’s 0.123 profit margin, Walt Disney had lower profit margin that was 0.1041 (Appendix 2D). However, the ROE of DreamWorks Animation was 0.064(6.4%), which was much lower than Walt Disney (Appendix 1A&2A). Thus, Walt Disney made more profits than its competitor. The net income of Walt Disney in 2011 was $ 4,807,000,000, and it net sales was $40,893,000,000 (Appendix 1D). There are huge amount differences between net income and net sales. Because Walt Disney doesn’t have cost of good sold, the main reason is high cost and expense that was $ 33,112,000,000. In addition, income tax and interest expense were other factors determined the discrepancy. Liquidity and Capital Structure: As we know that a quick ratio can measure the...
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...The Walt Disney Company: The Entertainment King “Adults are just grown up kids”. With those words, Walt Disney summarized what his empire would be, what it would give to the world. Far from only being a cartoon drawer, Mickey Mouse creator had a broader vision on how to entertain everyone, kids and parents, boys and girls. Committed and exigent, not only Walt Disney created a successful company, but also set the rules for the entire industry. Disney corporation is a multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate founded in 1923 by Walt and Roy O. Disney, as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. At the earlier stage of its life, the company would focus on story writing, character creating and cartoon drawing. But as it got more and more recognized, the firm started its way to be one of the biggest company in the world. Overviewing Disney’s businesses, it’s not complicated to understand how the company wants to monitor the entertainment industry as a whole. Not only Disney operates on different movie production related markets, but it also extends ad confirm his famousness through businesses that may appear disconnected. The risky bet Disney has made over its history belongs to the firm’s traditional strategy. The creation of a strong sustainable brand has passed through a lot of creativity and the sharing of ideas, as well as their management. When Disney competes in a singular and exigent industry within a global environment, the firms has developed tools and strength to stay...
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