Walt Disney Political
Politics at Walt Disney
Trinh Van Hoa
Columbia Southern University
Politics at Walt Disney
According to Jones (2013), Disney organization fell into a very politic and the conflict period in early 2000s before it was improved and moved to the next stage. The conflicts and political environment have been driving the performance of Disney down trends. However, Disney found the way to solve it in the best way, then turn around the company down trend to the positive of growing. According to Kelly (n.d.), organizational conflict is seldom beneficial to the parties involved, it is typically perceived by management, staff, board, and shareholder as a danger to kill performance. However, it also gives a positive aspect as conflict …show more content…
creates opportunities to improve operations, which are a much more productive if all parties can find a solution to solve the conflicts and get the same voice for improvement. Kelly (n.d.) also said that there should be an extremely successful organization really need and thrive on the conflict because it brings diverse ideas and opinions to the management team. These conflicts inspire new ideas and suggestions for improvement better performance. A leader of an organization should bring a high awareness of conflict to the organization, then transfer the conflict to critical thinking and lead it to a positive solution. When the solutions to solve the conflicts come, the success would come after. One can say that to manage a conflict in an organization is an art and science. That would give the next step to the success if the manager can see and manage the conflicts in the correct way. The Disney case is an excellent example to prove it.
What are the various sources of conflict and politics that have plagued Walt Disney in the past?
There are several conflicts and politics among the organization of Walt Disney that affected the performance of the firm.
The first conflicts that create the bad corporate management between the Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner and Steve Jobs, who was the major shareholder and Pixar’s CEO. The root cause of this conflict was the personal antagonism between these two leaders that resulted in poor performance of Walt Disney. Due to the conflicts with top management of Disney, the contract between Disney and Pixar film expired in 2007, Steve Jobs has threatened to discontinues renew Pixar 's contract with Disney (Jones, 2013).
The second conflict between the CEO of Disney and a number of directors, including Roy Disney who was a member of the founding family, which resulted in the barriers for not supported for Eisner.
Not only conflicts, but also it was also political issues among the organization when the CEO, Eisner’s policies to centralizing the firm decision to himself only, making him unpopular. This political regulation made the whole organization fall into the bureaucracy, all of the decision making was centralized to the CEO making the business unit manager become passive and work stalled due to process decision taking too long and slow.
Discuss how Iger used different conflict resolution and political strategies to solve these conflicts to make better use of the company’s resources.
At the first stage, according to Jones (2013), Iger quickly re-negotiated with Pixar and gained the support of Steve Jobs and the re-purchase from Pixar. This efficient step made Steve Jobs become biggest stockholder and Iger can get out of the influence of Eisner to adopt his plan to change the operation of Disney.
The second remarkable action form Iger is that he changed the structure of the Disney organization by changing resources that were the root cause of conflict. He empowered to lower manager level and allowed them to make decisions and raise their voice to a higher level for innovation implementation.
At the third action, Iger flattened the hierarchy by dismantling Disney’s strategic planning office. Then Iger also encouraged channels of communication because of which divisional managers were willing to speak out and contributed ideas for the growth of Disney, step up the encourage from the lower management level. This resulted in decentralization of authority, which reduced conflict and encouraged innovation.
In conclusion, those changes of the COO created a valuable effect to Disney organization and played back by its steady growth.
The root causes of conflicts were analysis and giving solution effectively. The revolution and his political tactics were admirable to be a middleman between Eisner and Jobs to solve the conflict and get out of the control of Eisner for his own management and give good effect to the change of organization.
Identifies sources and effects of power on organizational structure
According to Jones (2013), Eisner was encouraged to become chair of Disney that allowed him to handpick a successor for his old position, Mr. Iger. This promotion means of reducing his effect and his detail power to Disney organization. Eisner pays attention to building a coalition, in which Iger is a member of that coalition that also creates his power in the organization.
In conclusion, the power centralization gave the bad effects on the Walt Disney organization. It delayed and prolonged the decision making process, reduced the productivity of divisional level, demotivated the managers for not being able to make a single decision, limited innovation and new ideas of business units, and caused the struggle between
divisions.
Recommends how to evaluate organizational design/strategy in a global operations environment.
The important factors in an organization’s performance are strategy, stability, workflow, size & life cycle and corporate culture. Monitoring the performance and outcome of individual employees or tasks would evaluate the strength and weakness in the organization structure. The weakness can be solved either through training, allocation asset or eliminating ineffective employees or duplicate performing task. According to Triune (2012), the performance of the organization also shows through the characterization of employees, culture of organization, strategy, environment, and design of that organization
In order to get that evaluation, the top manager should schedule to meet managers personally to share with respect to the problem and ask for the cooperation to solve conflicts, motivation, and ask for a solution to improve the performance as well as the employee attitudes and behaviors. At the firm, the top manager used to have performance appraisal each 6 months with its subordinate to evaluate the performance, exchange the personal subject and company direction, solution and planning the performance improvement. The manager should subunit’s integration or balance between subunits in the organization to improve the total company performance.
In conclusion, the conflicts in the firm some time can create a critical thinking and people can cooperate with each other better after the conflict. However, if the conflicts do not have a clear understanding and non-cooperation for a solution, it would give negative effects to the performance and working environment of the firm. As a manager of the firm, one should analyze the conflicts and together the top management of the firm should look for positive solutions to solve it and moving forward to achieve the firm result and better performance.
References
Jones, G. R. (2013). Organizational theory, design, and change (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Kelly (n.d.). The pros and cons of organizational conflict. Retrieved from http://www.kellyservices.com.au/US/Business-Services/Management-Tips/Apr-2012-Conflict/#.VQQgGFqZbdk
Triune G. (2012). Strategy management: Organizational design. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/hardyalexander1/strategic-management-organizational-design
Trinh Van Hoa
Columbia Southern University
Politics at Walt Disney
According to Jones (2013), Disney organization fell into a very politic and the conflict period in early 2000s before it was improved and moved to the next stage. The conflicts and political environment have been driving the performance of Disney down trends. However, Disney found the way to solve it in the best way, then turn around the company down trend to the positive of growing. According to Kelly (n.d.), organizational conflict is seldom beneficial to the parties involved, it is typically perceived by management, staff, board, and shareholder as a danger to kill performance. However, it also gives a positive aspect as conflict …show more content…
creates opportunities to improve operations, which are a much more productive if all parties can find a solution to solve the conflicts and get the same voice for improvement. Kelly (n.d.) also said that there should be an extremely successful organization really need and thrive on the conflict because it brings diverse ideas and opinions to the management team. These conflicts inspire new ideas and suggestions for improvement better performance. A leader of an organization should bring a high awareness of conflict to the organization, then transfer the conflict to critical thinking and lead it to a positive solution. When the solutions to solve the conflicts come, the success would come after. One can say that to manage a conflict in an organization is an art and science. That would give the next step to the success if the manager can see and manage the conflicts in the correct way. The Disney case is an excellent example to prove it.
What are the various sources of conflict and politics that have plagued Walt Disney in the past?
There are several conflicts and politics among the organization of Walt Disney that affected the performance of the firm.
The first conflicts that create the bad corporate management between the Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner and Steve Jobs, who was the major shareholder and Pixar’s CEO. The root cause of this conflict was the personal antagonism between these two leaders that resulted in poor performance of Walt Disney. Due to the conflicts with top management of Disney, the contract between Disney and Pixar film expired in 2007, Steve Jobs has threatened to discontinues renew Pixar 's contract with Disney (Jones, 2013).
The second conflict between the CEO of Disney and a number of directors, including Roy Disney who was a member of the founding family, which resulted in the barriers for not supported for Eisner.
Not only conflicts, but also it was also political issues among the organization when the CEO, Eisner’s policies to centralizing the firm decision to himself only, making him unpopular. This political regulation made the whole organization fall into the bureaucracy, all of the decision making was centralized to the CEO making the business unit manager become passive and work stalled due to process decision taking too long and slow.
Discuss how Iger used different conflict resolution and political strategies to solve these conflicts to make better use of the company’s resources.
At the first stage, according to Jones (2013), Iger quickly re-negotiated with Pixar and gained the support of Steve Jobs and the re-purchase from Pixar. This efficient step made Steve Jobs become biggest stockholder and Iger can get out of the influence of Eisner to adopt his plan to change the operation of Disney.
The second remarkable action form Iger is that he changed the structure of the Disney organization by changing resources that were the root cause of conflict. He empowered to lower manager level and allowed them to make decisions and raise their voice to a higher level for innovation implementation.
At the third action, Iger flattened the hierarchy by dismantling Disney’s strategic planning office. Then Iger also encouraged channels of communication because of which divisional managers were willing to speak out and contributed ideas for the growth of Disney, step up the encourage from the lower management level. This resulted in decentralization of authority, which reduced conflict and encouraged innovation.
In conclusion, those changes of the COO created a valuable effect to Disney organization and played back by its steady growth.
The root causes of conflicts were analysis and giving solution effectively. The revolution and his political tactics were admirable to be a middleman between Eisner and Jobs to solve the conflict and get out of the control of Eisner for his own management and give good effect to the change of organization.
Identifies sources and effects of power on organizational structure
According to Jones (2013), Eisner was encouraged to become chair of Disney that allowed him to handpick a successor for his old position, Mr. Iger. This promotion means of reducing his effect and his detail power to Disney organization. Eisner pays attention to building a coalition, in which Iger is a member of that coalition that also creates his power in the organization.
In conclusion, the power centralization gave the bad effects on the Walt Disney organization. It delayed and prolonged the decision making process, reduced the productivity of divisional level, demotivated the managers for not being able to make a single decision, limited innovation and new ideas of business units, and caused the struggle between
divisions.
Recommends how to evaluate organizational design/strategy in a global operations environment.
The important factors in an organization’s performance are strategy, stability, workflow, size & life cycle and corporate culture. Monitoring the performance and outcome of individual employees or tasks would evaluate the strength and weakness in the organization structure. The weakness can be solved either through training, allocation asset or eliminating ineffective employees or duplicate performing task. According to Triune (2012), the performance of the organization also shows through the characterization of employees, culture of organization, strategy, environment, and design of that organization
In order to get that evaluation, the top manager should schedule to meet managers personally to share with respect to the problem and ask for the cooperation to solve conflicts, motivation, and ask for a solution to improve the performance as well as the employee attitudes and behaviors. At the firm, the top manager used to have performance appraisal each 6 months with its subordinate to evaluate the performance, exchange the personal subject and company direction, solution and planning the performance improvement. The manager should subunit’s integration or balance between subunits in the organization to improve the total company performance.
In conclusion, the conflicts in the firm some time can create a critical thinking and people can cooperate with each other better after the conflict. However, if the conflicts do not have a clear understanding and non-cooperation for a solution, it would give negative effects to the performance and working environment of the firm. As a manager of the firm, one should analyze the conflicts and together the top management of the firm should look for positive solutions to solve it and moving forward to achieve the firm result and better performance.
References
Jones, G. R. (2013). Organizational theory, design, and change (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Kelly (n.d.). The pros and cons of organizational conflict. Retrieved from http://www.kellyservices.com.au/US/Business-Services/Management-Tips/Apr-2012-Conflict/#.VQQgGFqZbdk
Triune G. (2012). Strategy management: Organizational design. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/hardyalexander1/strategic-management-organizational-design