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Disney

Stewart Zambrano

Arizona State University

OGL 345-Module 3

April 2, 2023
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Disney

After reading chapter 3, I decided to speak on The Walt Disney Company, they were

ranked number 53 in the fortune 500 list off 2022 ("World’s Most Admired Companies,”2022).

Walt Disney founded Disney on October 16, 1923, in Los Angeles California, “Walt Disney

signs a contract with M. J. Winkler to produce a series of Alice Comedies. The year marks the

start of The Walt Disney Company, first known as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio”

(“Disney 1923,”2023). In over a hundred years The Walt Disney Company has grown from

theme parks on different ends of the earth including Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Florida, China

and California with a total of twelve parks, Disney has also made classic movies like Dumbo,

Robin Hood, Lion King and many others as they have become an international phenomenon.

The Walt Disney Company continues to grow and expand as they now own Pixar, Marvel

Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, 20th Century Animation, and Searchlight Pictures

aside from where they started with Walt Disney Pictures and Walt Disney Animation Studios.

The mission of The Walt Disney Company is “to entertain, inform and inspire people

around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands,

creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment

company.” (“About Disney,”2023). Chapter three spoke on how many Western businesses tend
to use the offshoring strategy, “manufacturing and assembly operation to overseas locations,

particularly to locations in the developing world” (Fryer, 2015, p. 116). Allegations against The

Walt Disney Company have surfaced accusing them of “paying slave wages overseas to

employees who manufacture toys that sell at a very high margin in the United States”

(“Employment Practices at Walt Disney Company,”2021), this would be a perfect example of

offshoring. What is most interesting is that Disney’s seven core values include honesty, integrity,

respect, courage, openness, diversity and balance (“Disney Leadership,”2010) but they seem to

sometimes contradict themselves, this remind me of the formula of the end in itself that means

“we must not simply use people to achieve some objective that we desire; we must also value

them in their own right” (Fryer, 2015, p. 120).

The Walt Disney Company is known for its anti-union stance but a Disney world service

workers does exist, “the six unions that make up the service trades Council Union had been

demanding a starting minimum wage jump to at least $18 an hour in the first year of the contract,

up from the starting minimum wage of $15 an hour won in the previous contract” (“Disney

World Unions Vote Down Offer Covering 45,000 Workers,” 2023), I personally would have

thought they would be interested in using the formula of universal acceptance. The reason I

would think The Walt Disney Company would use the formula of universal acceptance is

because inflation has caused groceries, rent and other everyday items to go up in price, “Thus

morality consists in the relation of all action to the making of laws” (Fryer, 2015, p. 110), if they

want to keep workers happy knowing everything around them is changing it should be universal

especially since they are allegedly offshoring in Central America and Asia. I believe that using
Kant’s moral philosophy would benefit Disney, “anyone who takes morality to be something and

not merely a chimerical idea without truth” (Fryer, 2015, p. 90). The workers are human and

ethical choices need to be

made for a company so big like Disney. The part that becomes tricky for Disney is if they were

fair to all their employees and paid good wages how much profit would decrease because of the

increase in wages, this would also affect the shareholders and even stakeholders because it can

possibly mean the theme park ticket would spike up in price. This is why Offshoring is so big

with western society, even using reason to make decisions becomes difficult, would you sacrifice

getting into a deeper debt to make it more fair for employees or pay off everything that is owed

by sacrificing wages. What I have realized is unfortunately in life and in Disney you cannot work

off sentiment and it must be off reason, Otis acted off sentiment in the example versus Sofia

reasoned with herself to figure out what was more important (Fryer, 2015, p. 92). When I think

about how Disney makes their decisions, I believe it is off reason than sentiment, this can be a

good and bad quality at the same time but like Kant said, “each of us should be free to apply our

own reason in order to identify right and wrong” (Fryer, 2015, p. 123).

I decided to learn about Disney because I would love to work with them someday, I do

love the mission statement of storytelling, inspiring, informing and entertaining. Since a child

The Walt Disney Company has made a difference in my life but after seeing some of the

allegations it leaves me to think they try to keep some of their actions in the dark because “if you

don’t want to read about it in the New York Times you shouldn’t be doing it” (Fryer, 2015, p.

123). Disney has come a long way in the last hundred years and I am sure it will not stop
anytime soon, we will continue to see movies, clothes, video games, theme parks and many other

innovating things with Disney and hopefully I find a project management position with them.

References

Disney 1923 history, (2023)

https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/history/1923-2/#:~:text=Walt%20Disney%20signs%20a

%20contract,the%20Disney%20Brothers%20Cartoon%20Studio.

Disney Leadership, (2010)

https://www.whittingtonassociates.com/2010/02/disney-leadership/

Disney World Unions Vote Down Offer Covering 45,000 Workers, (2023)

https://www.voanews.com/a/disney-world-unions-vote-down-offer-covering-45-000-workers-/

6948150.html#:~:text=Disney%20World%20service%20workers%20who,won%20in%20the

%20previous%20contract.

Employment Practices at Walt Disney Company, (2021)

https://www.bononilawgroup.com/resources/articles/employment-practices-at-walt-disney-

company/#:~:text=Allegations%20range%20from%20discrimination%20to,margin%20in

%20the%20United%20States.
Fryer, M. (20150. Ethics Theory. SAGE

https://asu.instructure.com/courses/148770/external_tools/322700

World’s Most Admired Companies, (2022)

https://fortune.com/company/disney/worlds-most-admired-companies/