Value of Culture Sensitivity: Michael

Value of culture sensitivity: Michael Eisner and the failure of Euro Disney-Paris in "Keys to the Kingdom" by Kim Masters

In the book, "Keys to the Kingdom: The rise of Michael Eisner and the fall of everybody else," author Kim Masters draws a portrait of Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner as she attempted to elucidate how the company has failed to effectively launch and create a following in its Euro Disney branch in France. Masters' general objective was to illustrate how Eisner's personality and perception about and manner of conducting business contradicted the nature of his job at Disney, a company that has "built its name and business through relationships." Thus, in order to achieve this objective, Masters had created a portrait of Eisner as an individual and set his personality against the principles Walt Disney Co. lived by through the years.

One of the important observations that Masters pointed out in her book was the Eisner's interpretation of business as mainly a way to "make money," and not to provide entertainment service and deliver customer satisfaction, functions that an entertainment company like Walt Disney needed to satisfy in order to thrive. The author tried to understand Eisner's perspective by looking at his childhood and family life. The Eisner portrait Masters had drawn for her readers was not the powerful and feisty Disney CEO people had known. Instead, she depicted Eisner as an individual that has no remarkable personality and intelligence, an individual that merely made his way up in the corporate ladder through connections and his evident wealth. Moreover, he was also shown as an individual trying very hard to please a highly-demanding father, a person who did not enjoy his childhood trying too hard to excel and become exceptional (and failing to do so in the process). To sum up Masters' characterization of Eisner, she highlighted him as an individual "who portrays himself as an insatiably curious child whose father begged for relief from his incessant questions."

Evidently, Masters' portrait of Eisner contrasted the personality of the individual fit to manage Walt Disney Co. Depicting Eisner as incapable of knowing, even perceiving, consumers' needs, particularly that of children, it was not surprising that he had failed to successfully launch Euro Disney at France. The book emphasized the importance of understanding and being sensitive to other cultures as one of the most essential factors that determine the success of a business, be it a local or global organization. Regressing to Eisner's childhood was a tactic that the author adopted in order to convey the message that one must be able to understand the targeted market in order to effectively deliver the appropriate services that this particular market needs and wants. Apparently, Eisner's lack of sensitivity and disregard for the high regard French people gave to their culture led to Euro Disney's downfall in France.