History, Development and Growth of the company
The Walt Disney Company is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. Founded on October 16, 1923 by brothers Walt and Roy Disney as a small animation studio, it has become one of the biggest Hollywood studios, and owner of eleven theme parks and several television networks.
Nature of internal environment
Strategy in the beginning of 1990 was to build Disney’s core strengths in the three areas of entertainment and recreation, motion pictures, video and consumers products in order to increase the value of the Disney’s franchises and brand name.
Eisner has hands-on management style which has proved to be not the best one in many cases. There have been several internal “fights” leading to the leaving of several notable executives in the company.
Strength
- World known, valuable brand name. Its position among the top brands has been very stable over the years.
Weakness
- Low cost strategy in movie making was based mainly on remuneration of actors. Therefore, by increasing honorees it disappeared.
- Disney’s management team, specifically Eisner, several times has showed that he does not take into account local specifics or needs. There have been many failures because of his decisions or management approach:
o Entertainment park failure in France – wrong location (climate issues), too high prices (compared to Orlando)
o Merger with ABC, when Eisner could not pienemt ABC corporate management approach thus ABC top managers left the company. He could not understand the difference between movie business and changing environment of broadcasting business
o ...