Theories of Management and Leadership - Walt Disney Company - Case Study Example

Institution Affiliated The Study of Global Mindset: Walt Disney Company Student’s Name Subject Code Professor   Abstract Globalization is a reality and had catalyzed international companies to extend business operations in various countries. A global mindset is a modern business concept that had pooled ideologies and theoretical frameworks developed by economists and business scholars in the attempt to describe techniques contemporary organizations are using to position brands in global markets. This paper addresses the global mindset techniques that companies are using to position products and services in different geographical locations. The significance of this article is to analyze theories of management and leadership in cross-cultural issues for business. For more understanding, the paper uses Walt Disney Company as a case study. Introduction Globalization is the main engine that has been propelling companies to operate in more than one country due to a smooth flow of resources. Companies working in different geographical locations attract and pool together employees from different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, managers heading firms with multicultural human systems face tough times especially managing a company in a foreign land. Slashing production costs also has become a factor that stimulates businesses to operate in segmented global markets. To reduce production costs and increase market competitiveness in various segments by exploiting opportunities the company strategically positions the brands in many countries by opening production sites. Additionally, multinational corporations penetrate into foreign markets to gain access to production knowledge, economic and financial resources. In this aspect, in modern times multinational businesses and organizations are becoming more complex founded in an integrated leadership with multiple cultures. Management remains a fundamental factor in enterprises operating in different markets with socio-cultural diversity. In other words, organizational executives heading companies in the foreign country must be culturally sensitive and ready to embrace diversity by promoting production creativity. However, an effective cross-cultural leadership and management structure is a challenge for most of the global organizations. Cultural differences among the employees and governing structures might lead to production misunderstanding due to company's social-cultural mindset. In the last few decades, some of the large corporations operating in global markets had failed due to poor or weak multicultural leadership mindset that leads to poor organizational performance. The essence of having a global mindset when the company is strategizing to position the products on the world markets is to develop leadership and managerial structures with a capacity to understand the employees and customers' cultural values. According to Hodges and Gill (2014) it is important for global companies to know the employees and clients social-cultural phenomenon for it is a variable that builds the organizational competitiveness. Additionally, for a corporate operating in the world market to fulfill the needs of the customers and to strengthen the value of the employees, the firm must adhere to the locals' cultures and lifestyles found in the host country. At the same time, Pasmore (2011) suggests that an organizational to have a cultural proficiency does not translate the capacity of leaders and managers knowing and understand every social stance in every market. This paper aims to articulate the essence of this article is to critically analyze theories of management and leadership in cross-cultural issues for business. For more understanding, the paper brings together various theoretical frameworks articulated from quantitative secondary data explored by different authors. Specifically, the paper uses the Disney Company as the case study for the company operates in multiple markets, United Sates, Japan, France and Hong Kong. The paper also aims to answer the question “does the Disney Company have a global mindset?” The Concept Developing a Global Mindset A global mindset is the business concept that encompasses leadership and their managerial skills. Corporate operating in markets with multiple cultures requires leaders with global minds. Nguyen and Umemoto (2009) states that an effective global leadership mindset concept integrates cognitive, psychological, behavioral and interactional dimensions; which in turn provide a complete, picture that a company requires to succeed in the global market. 21st-century firms have a global mindset due to globalization effects catalyzed by technological resources and development of transportation with reduced physical boundaries (Aggarwa, 2011). In other words, globalization has become a prime factor to global leaders with the global mindset for it helps the organizational executives to design and strategize business functions with the competitive edge. More importantly, managers with global minds have the capacity to make decisions, and ability to advise the company on how to develop goods and services that fit the markets across the borders. Additionally, Takahashi et al (2012) purport that, unlike in a few centuries ago globalization had made global markets small, and hence, 21st century corporate should look their market segmentation beyond national borders. In this aspect, globalization had dissolved traditional trading barriers making global companies to exchange operational cultures. Furthermore, in modern times, small, medium and multinational corporations are becoming global, and therefore, companies are moving their abilities across the countries. The development of international perspective in business also allows the companies to tap and exploit industrial opportunities in the foreign markets. For a company to succeed in the global markets, the executive must integrate skills and knowledge from various cultures for the purpose of developing products with a capacity to fulfill customers' needs. The essence of having the global mindset within a company is to demonstrate the managers' ability to understand and deal with organizational ambiguity and diversity. In other words, managers and corporate leaders illuminate the global mindset by portraying how knowledgeable they concern social-cultural elements within the company. Therefore, companies with individual and cultural attributed managers have the capacity to propel the company to high levels in the global markets. According to Singh (2015), culture is a vital variable in business for it helps the company to differentiate its products; companies with ability to position products designed with diversity gains competitive advantage than companies with unified products. In their study, Cullen and Parboteeah (2008) found that culture is a significance variable in leadership especially for leaders heading international corporations. Working ethics, behaviors and labor relations differs from one country to the other. In this aspect, global leaders with global mindset must be flexible enough to accommodate other nationalities' cultures. Moreover, cross-cultural proficiency allows leaders with the global mindset to interact and connect with counterpart managers operating in other countries. Therefore, it is important for managers and organizational leaders with the global mindset to assimilate global diversity especially while interacting with foreign cultures. According to Zander et al (2013) the strategic importance of a company having a global mindset is giving the corporation an opportunity and ability to combine the production speed with an accurate market response. In other words, managers with the capacity to connect with multifaceted cultures they have the ability to balance the tradeoffs between global requirements and local adoption. Furthermore, development of global mindset involves cultural intelligence and global business competence. Thus, having a global mindset translates to smooth coordination of activities of the company’s operations in various geographical locations; leaders with global mindset should demonstrate clearly the relationship between the business's headquarters activities and the branches in different places. Therefore, global mindset and global leadership are two whole concepts in the 21st-century business arena. Global Mindset Leadership Theory (model) Lovvorn and Chen (2011) global mindset model explores key components that global leaders should consider. Global mindset and global leadership acknowledge the capacity of an organization to position products in global market. The mindset model also argues that the socialization concepts applied within an organization determine how the company relates and merges with market realities. Organizational mindset constitutes three core elements: the organization itself, leadership structure and employees. The interplay among these elements allows the company to formulate global mindset strategies and in turn promoting company's socio-cultural perspective in the market; ability to develop diversified and innovated products that solve social-consumption conflicts in the market. The organizational culture frames the production techniques (global perspective) while employees and leadership structure influences the development of goods basing on the holistic standpoint. The diagram below illustrates the global mindset leadership model. An Overview of Disney Company History Walt Disney is a multinational media company and one of the largest mass media firm with large consumers in the world based in California, United States. The company began the media broadcast operations in the early 1920s as a family business owned by the Disney brothers (MacMillan, 2016). The company transmitted the first cartoon product in 1929. By 1938, the company aired the first animated cartoon film. In the mid-1940s, the company extended its operations to neighboring countries, targeting European and Latin American countries. Between 1970 and 1980 the company had opened new branches and ventured into another production segment, Disney Channel, and Disney Florida Resort. In the 1990s the company continued to establish the operations in various international markets including Asia (MacMillan, 2016). With the help of globalization and technology evolution, the company has grown dynamically promoting and fostering broadcast innovation, and expanding the operations to new markets around the world. The Walt Disney had entered complete acquisitions and expansions in various global markets becoming a global empire company with the strongest brand in the media industry; television, print media, filming, and music. The company's cartoon network has a global outreach penetrating into various geographical locations. Apart from specializing in the media industry, the company has some entertainment resorts and parks in Europe and Asia. The Disney's product diversification had been the core pillar of the enterprise's competitive advantage. In modern times, the company's brand has become a global icon with quality and quantity entertainment worldwide reputation. Market Segments Walt Disney operates in spanning market segments in United Sates, Latin America, Europe, Japan, France and Hong Kong (Asian Pacific). The company employs over 180,000 workers across all global branches. The company specializes in six market segments: Disney Interactive, consumer products, The Walt Disney Studio, Cartoon Networks, and entertainment parks and resorts (Disney Doubles Quarterly Profit, 2012). The Media Network segment is the largest that constitutes Telecast production and distribution, radio broadcast, cable, and channels distribution, print media and internet (digital0 media. Companies like ABC, The Disney TV Channel and ESPN are examples of multinational media broadcast segments owned and controlled by Disney Company. The Disney's brand is adamant in American and European markets specifically in the recording of Hollywood film sites. Additionally, Disney’s park and resort market segment constitute multiple fragments, which aim to entertain global families with travel and leisure services. The company had built tourists and landmark destinations featuring company's film entertainment and literature. Currently, Disney has five family vacation destinations, over ten sparks and several resorts located in different parts of the world. The company also ferries the clients to these destinations using cruise line ships. Some of the resort entertainment centers include Disney Vacation Club, Walt Disney Imagineering and Aulani and Spa Resort. Disney Media segment also records and sells movies, drama plays, and music; Disney Theatrical Group, Disney Live Theatrical and The Disney on ice are some of the company's audio and entertainment broadcasts (Disney Doubles Quarterly Profit, 2012). Finally, the company also provides consumer products such as toys, books, and apparels to their consumers. Disney Consumer segment has a chain of retail shops in different geographical locations. Recently, the company launched Disney Digital primarily for interaction including social media, internet media and online games. In the last two decades, the company had penetrated into world's largest cities. The company is also targeting to position its brand in Shanghai, China. Theoretical Approach -The Disney’s Global Mindset In support and basing on the above company’s analysis, Disney has a diversity strategy that propels and catalyzes company’s managers to act responsively with a global mindset. The Disney Company has integrated products and entertainment services that illuminate the company’s ability to leverage market diversity. As mentioned above, the company has over 180,000 employees working in different geographical locations under one executive management structure in company’s headquarters. The Disney‘s chief executive officer, Dr. Robert Iger, remarks that the corporation employees attracts and retains employees with a capacity of embracing cultural diversity and with global mindsets (Sutton et al., 2013). Under the leadership of Paul Richardson, The Disney's Diversity Officer, the company invests heavily in training employees concerning the benefits of diversity initiatives. The company has been developing most creative and innovative entertainment products and services segmented accordingly with diverse markets. The corporate culture is to engage all employees across all corporate networks by involving them in production processes as well as in making organizational decisions. Thus, the company's production approach aims to diversify market segments by employing workforce with the ability to exploit global business opportunities within media and entertainment industries. The company deals with diverse communities in the world, and hence, for a company to meet the consumers' needs in these market networks, the company had developed and trained leaders and managers with global mindsets. From customers' perspective, Disney is looking forward to extend the market operations to major global cities specifically in Europe, United States, Pacific Asia, and Australia. According to Engle and Crowne (2014) Disney has a profound market and industry knowledge with a massive customer base. The company also has vast human, physical and financial resources, which gives the company an opportunity to grow in foreign markets. Therefore, the concepts of global mindset applied by the Disney shapes the company’s competitiveness in the global markets. The Disney’s leadership structure has a powerfully global perspective illustrating how the mindset shapes the perception of company’s customers towards the products and services portrayed by the firm’s management and operational strategies. Sutton et al. (2013) suggests contesting in global markets the company must utilize comprehensive human and physical resources. Globalization effects had caused world markets to evolve taking the entertainment and media industries by storm. In this context, Disney Company developed a strategic slogan portraying a two-way theoretical approach: thinking local and acting globally, and Thinking globally and acting locally. Think globally act locally is an approach that challenges most of the leadership structures governing international companies like Disney. This method illustrates how local managers aims to develop products that will reach global markets but due to inability to identify the foreign cultures requirements and available resources, and hence, the company remains acting and satisfying local customers; meeting the needs of the local clients. Disney had fallen into this trap several times especially in resort and entertainment segments. At the beginning of Disney Resort Paris, the company had an American mindset by providing clients with American dishes, which were contradicting with the customers’ culture in Paris. The company faced stiff competition from rivals like Wal-Mart. Think globally act locally describes the challenge Disney marketing managers face when supervising in foreign lands. Therefore, tailoring products with specific market requirements are of great importance. At the same time, think locally act globally approaches help the company develop a business strategy that captures the global markets. This method is the most efficient, especially in the current globalized business arena (Pasmore, 2011). The essence of developing products and services with the global mindset is to capture the clients in various geographical locations. Disney's success in different market platforms is by developing and focusing on positioning standardized goods and services in global market segments. Therefore, reacting with global mindset against global competitors had escalated Disney's profit margin to high levels. The Disney’s global mindset reveals how business environments play an essential role in leadership and managerial structure. Crowne (2013) provides two classes of environmental factors pushing Disney Company to embrace global cultural diversity and to diversify products and services; proactive and active forces. Ananthram and Nankervis (2014) further groups these forces into four classes: organizational executive view of the world, corporate dimension on global markets, the company's administrative, ethical heritage and industry specified forces that drive or inhibits the company from globalizing. Top executive's perspective concerning the global markets plays the vital role in setting company's global mindset. In this aspect, for a company to succeed in the global markets it requires visionary leaders with proactive business strategies. Ananthram and Nankervis (2014) states that executives with vision breakdown the traditional geographical market boundaries within an industry. In this cases study, Walt Disney Company has proactive managers with the ability to promote and propel the company to positions of the global mindset and global leadership. Organizational dimension on the world markets also plays the vital role in driving the company towards the global markets. The company's ability to adopt foreign markets and availability of resources determines the ability of the company to compete at world levels. The significance of having corporate production culture, tangible and intangible assets is to configure business ability to position the brand in various geographical locations. As mentioned above, Disney has an administrative heritage that allows the company to operate in multiple countries. The organizational structure has an influence on company's global mindset. The company with a managing structure oriented with products and customers' value can develop differentiated and innovated goods and services that fit each market segment. Therefore, managers and organizational leaders with global mindset analyze market data with the aim of producing and positioning products that satisfy customers' in various market segments. At the same time, the company with a global mindset employs workers from diverse cultural backgrounds as a way of pooling innovativeness from different nationalities. In other words, the leadership structure should develop geographic dimension to develop innovated organizational products using both local and global human labor. Moreover, Disney leadership structure has a global mindset that allows the company to develop goods and services specifications according to the customers' demands. For instance, the media segment publishes books and broadcasts movies basing on market segments regarding demographic distribution (age and gender) culture and lifestyles. The company uses different languages such as French, Japanese and English as a way of appreciating diversity. Finally, industrial forces shape the company's ability to develop the global mindset in production. External business dynamics such as global competition, global sourcing, economies of scales, evolving customers' needs and technology evolution forces international companies to assimilate global mindset techniques. The cultural differences in various markets might forbid the company from transferring homogenous goods and services from one country to another. Therefore, developing a global mindset allows the company to meet the consumers' needs, which differs in all market segments. Differentiated products provided by Disney are the central pillar of the enterprise's competitive advantage. Entertainment is one of the Disney’s booming sectors. The company specializes in TV channel, music, video games and theatrical that captures the attention of thousands of listeners and audience in various market segments. The primary purpose of having diversified entertainment services is to face the business dynamics culminating in industrial parts. Conclusion In modern times, globalization had dissolved international traditional trading boundaries forcing the companies to venture and exploit opportunities created in global markets. However, for international corporate to succeed in the world markets, they must develop products and services with the global mindset. Leadership is one of the core elements that determine the organizational production and competitiveness in the global markets. Additionally, contemporary organizations operate in markets shaped by multiple cultures. Having several business branches in different geographical locations attracts different consumers with varying needs and consumption lifestyles. The essence of having the global mindset in a company is to innovated products that fit market segments. Walt Disney is one of the global companies with a global mindset. The company has complex but smooth leadership structure. Through global leadership structure, Disney Company had developed diversified products and services that fit the consumers in various market segments. The company employs workers from different cultural backgrounds as a way of strengthening the company's productivity and competitiveness. To sum up, Disney has been using technology as the core pillar of developing goods and services; the current innovated products emerge from established technologies. Furthermore, the company's blended organizational culture brings diverse skills and experiences from the labor market. References Aggarwa, R. (2011). Developing a global mindset: Integrating demographics, sustainability, technology, and globalization. Journal of Teaching in International Business, 22(1), 51-69. Ananthram, S. and Nankervis, A.R., 2014. Outcomes and Benefits of a Managerial Global Mind‐set: An Exploratory Study with Senior Executives in North America and India. Thunderbird International Business Review, 56(2), pp.193-209. Crowne, K.A., 2013. Cultural exposure, emotional intelligence, and cultural intelligence: An exploratory study. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 13(1), pp.5-22. Cullen, J.B. and Parboteeah K.P., 2008. Multinational management: a strategic approach. South Western Publisher. Disney Doubles Quarterly Profit, 2012. Business Week Online. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Odum Library, Valdosta, GA. Accessed on 29 March 2017 from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=23121276&site=ehost-live Engle, R.L. and Crowne, K.A., 2014. The impact of international experience on cultural intelligence: an application of contact theory in a structured short-term programme. Human Resource Development International, 17(1), pp.30-46. Hodges, J. and Gill, R., 2014. Sustaining change in organizations. New York: Sage. Lovvorn, A. S. & Chen, J.-S. (2011). Developing a global mindset: The relationshipbetween an international assignment and cultural intelligence. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 2(9), 275-282. MacMillan, D., 2016. “Tying the Knot with Disney.” Business Week Online. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Odum Library, Valdosta, GA. Accessed on 29 March 2017 from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=24292183&site=ehost Nguyen, N. T. B., & Umemoto, K. (2009). Understanding leadership for cross-cultural knowledge management. Journal of Leadership Studies, 2(4), 23-35. doi:10.1002/jls.20078 Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 42, pp.228-37 Pasmore, W.A., 2011. Tipping the balance: Overcoming persistent problems in organizational change. In Research in organizational change and development (pp. 259-292). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Singh, D., 2015. Managing Cross-cultural Diversity: Issues and Challenges in Global Organizations. Journal of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, PP 43-50 Sutton, C., Zander, L. 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