Affirmative Action at Disney Company

Affirmative Action at Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company has struggled with and often been involved with litigation over a lack of diversity in hiring practices, both in its theme parks and throughout its many entertainment businesses. Claims that the company ignores Affirmative Action (AA) initiatives at its theme parks (Van Maanen, 1991) has led to the company being required to perform Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) audits periodically to ensure compliance to AA initiatives. The intent of this paper is to evaluate how The Disney Company has managed the litigation surrounding their AA violations and the steps they have taken to ensure EEOC audit compliance.

Disney Diversity Initiatives Defined As A Result of EEOC Audits

In addition to the reported violations throughout their theme parks, The Disney Company was considered to be in violation of Affirmative Action in their retail stores and call centers as well (Saseen, 1993). The most significant outcomes of the litigation the company went through was the requirement of completing periodic EEOQ audits, the result of which would be published to employees and also shared with the EEOC itself. What emerged from these audits was the discontinuous approach to AA compliance which had been in place before, and highlighted the need for creating a lifecycle-based approach to managing AA initiatives over time and serves as the foundation of the Disney Diversity Initiatives program. Disney realizes there had been a low level of learning with regard to AA compliance, and as a result defined the first phase of their model as "No Awareness" which is where associates went through periodic training programs. Second, the Disney Diversity Initiative program sought to integrate EEOC compliance and hiring practices into the company's core business model and mission, as the EEOC audits had shown a significant disconnect between their intended AA actions and results. The third phase of the Disney Diversity Initiative was defined as Understanding. This was the largest and most costly of the steps of the Disney Diversity Initiative to complete. It involved ensuring each employee in the company thoroughly understood how EEOC compliance was interlocked with the company vision, mission and objectives. Disney next shifted its focus on middle and senior management, creating a phase called Integration of Values to Action, which stressed the need for ensuring training of managers on how their actions directly impact AA in the workplace. This included role-playing and illustrating how a manager's role has direct implications on how biases in the workplace are created and supported. The EEOC audits showed a wide variation in the awareness of managers in terms of their ability to nurture and promote AA, or through negligence or a lack of perception, condone it. The last phase of the Disney Diversity Initiative is Leveraging Diversity in the Workplace. This is the capstone segment of the program and illustrates why it is so critical for every company to integrate AA strategies into their core business models, mission and value statements.