Management and Leadership of Disney's Magic Kingdom - PowerPoint Presentation Example

Management And Leadership of Disney’s Magic Kingdom MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP OF DESTINY’S MAGIC KINGDOM Introduction Magic Kingdom is one of the four themes parks of Walt Disney World Resort, which was first built in 1971. The Magic Kingdom was founded after the success of the Disneyland. It is filled with everything from magic to fantasy such as photo safaris, Himalayan adventures at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, globetrotting, and space exploration at Epco. The park has six themed lands; USA, Main Street, Adventureland, Fantasyland, Tommorrowland and Frontierland.

Due to its amazing attractions, it has become a premier of vacation destination for both guests and fans. Today, it consists of water parks, theme parks, championship golf courses, resort hotels, and Disney vacation club properties together with sports complex and Downtown Disney. Disney’s Magic Kingdom has not only become the world’s most popular vacation destinations but also a huge contributor to the economy.The Success of the company can be reflected to the time of Walt Disney. His main aim was to make the company successful by producing unique, creative, and quality entertainment experiences.

This can be highlighted by the success of the Mickey Mouse, the first full-length animated movie ever to be produced (Stewart, 2006). The success of the Magic Kingdom has prevailed in spite of several unsuccessful CEOs at the company. Over the years, the company has expanded its theme parks and reached high profits.However, the company has faced a number of challenges under Michael Eisner. Eisner’s leadership position at the company raised questions regarding Disney’s corporate governance.

This reflects to the hiring and firing of Ovitz just fourteen months after his hiring (Lisa, 2012). There was incomplete communication to the board about the situation of Ovitz. The information infrastructure faced the challenge of who received what type of communication, the form of communication and frequency of communication. Another challenge was Eisner’s hiring of close friends as directors to maintain his support within the board. This implied that the company lacked proper mechanisms in the hiring of executive members.

Furthermore, the situation at the company was compromised by the shareholders revolt that was pushed by Roy E. Disney to remove Eisner from the company’s leadership (Stewart, 2006). With the support of the board, he removed Eisner from chairmanship. This was a critical point in the company’s corporate governance since in its last two decades; it was uncommon to vote against the re-election of any member in public companies (Lisa, 2012). Eisner’s drive for short-term profits contradicted the aim of the company to provide quality service for customer satisfaction in achieving long-term profits.

There were several prevailing lessons that were learnt from Eisner such as;It called for the compensation committee to deliver its duties efficiently especially in matters regarding employment decisions. The board of directors should actively participate in matters of corporate governance so that not to allow powerful CEO to gain monarchical power.Directors should ensure that all the hiring process and steps taking in making hiring decisions are well documented (Lisa, 2012).After the decision by Eisner to step down in 2005, Robert Iger took over.

Robert’s first challenge was to provide a working environment and motivating workers to achieve goals. He gave the managers room to make independent managerial decisions. Robert did not only give people a sense of purpose but also promoted collaborations and enhanced diversity (Lisa, 2012). His leadership created harmony between business performance and care for the people in the organization. He adopted technology as one of the strategy of growing the business fast, this was significant in 2005 when Disney’s programs and movies were distributed in iPod platform (Lisa, 2012).

The lesson learnt from the Disney’s Magic Kingdom challenges is that the board of directors should comprise of competent and skilled individual who act in the interest of the shareholders. Although, the company has continued to experience a well organized management compared to 1990s, there is need to create more room for improvement in its management and leadership.ReferencesLisa R. (2012, March). “Disney CEO Iger adds chairman role”. Reuters, 36, 1-6. Retrieved on 2nd Feb from, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/13/us-disney-board-idUSBRE82C0Y520120313 Stewart, J. B. (2006).

Disney war. New York: Simon & Schuster.