Walt Disney Organizational Structure

Organizational Structure

A company with one of the finest organizational structures known all over the globe for its movies, theme parks, and clothing. Currently having 479 retail stores in the United States, and is one of the best multinational companies in the world, having stores located in Canada, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Japan. The Walt Disney Company is recognized throughout the world, as the “The Happiest Place on Earth” (unknown).

This paper will provide a detailed description of the organizational structure of Walt Disney and how it started as just a dream, and expanded to one of the most recognizable multinational corporations throw-out the world. Furthermore, it will analyze the history of how this company came into existence, how the organization structure was established, and ultimately can the organizational structure of this company be improved in any way.

The Dream

Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois December 5, 1901, most of us know him as Walt Disney. Walt had a love of drawing at an early age. After

World War I, Walt’s brother Roy got him a job at Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio where he met a cartoonist named Ub Iwerks. He went on to work at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials out of cut out animation. After a few years, he went on to open his own business called Laugh-O-Gram, which went bankrupt in 1923. That same year, Walt, his brother Roy and Ub Iwerks pooled their money and moved to Hollywood, California forming a partnership known as The Disney Brothers’ Studio on October 16, 1923 (unknown). Disney’s core business is that it strives to be the world’s most famous entertainment company by creating amazing experiences for individuals of all ages, all the while obtaining the motto “The Happiest Place on Earth.” After exploring the history of how Walt Disney came into existence, let us look at the organization structure and how it was established.
Structure
As learned through this course an organizational structure starts with the vision of where the company wants to be and its purpose and values. (Nahavandi, Denhardt, Denhardt, & Aristigueta, 2015, p. 437). Disney has a structure of organization that has shown to aid in being innovative and creative. The chart that Disney follows is not that of a formal hierarchy, like the majority of companies in the world. It is rather a chronologically based organizational chart to make a film (Gendron, 2014). Allowing everyone to be on equal ground with-in the company.
Walt Disney’s vision was to create a company that would become the world’s largest destination vacation spot, through his unique organizational structure has accomplished this with over 17 million visitors per year. People come from near and far to get a glimpse of what a huge empire this company has become. Not only do people flock to visit the theme parks and stay in the resorts but also the entertainment side has reached depths no other entertainment company can match. The chart below shows the vision of Walt Disney, on the left is a standard organizational chart and on the left is Disney’s organizational chart (Hirasuna, 2009). This way of thinking has ultimately led to the success of the company.

Improvement
Can Disney’s organizational structure be improved upon?

With any process, there is always room for improvement. Disney, although one of the best multinational companies in the world, it is not the best. With that being said, Disney can look at the possibilities of tweaking some of its structure, looking at each process and identifying the most important and asking the question “What is the best way to do want they want to do?” and the answer to that question will be the basis of restructuring the process (Nahavandi, Denhardt, Denhardt, & Aristigueta, 2015, p. 465). Although, as far as Disney goes, they have proven to be at the top of their vision and would not change much at all. Think about how Disney has affected the world, I would go so far as to say that almost every household has at least one movie that is a Disney movie; whether you are old or young, we are all kids at

heart.
This paper provided a detailed description of the organizational structure of Walt Disney and how this company started as just a dream, then expanded into one of the most recognizable multinational corporations throw-out the world. Furthermore, it has analyzed the history of how this company came into existence; how the organization structure was established, and ultimately answered the question of can this company’s organizational structure be improved in any way.