Disney's Organizational Behavior: Culture, Training & Success
This paper examines how the Walt Disney Company achieves sustained success through deliberate organizational behavior strategies. Beginning with rigorous pre-hire screening and continuing through immersive orientation and the Disney Institute's training programs, the paper traces how Disney builds a workforce culture aligned with its entertainment mission. It explores the company's employee satisfaction surveys, its "Performance Excellence" initiative, and the management philosophy of hiring for attitude and training for skill. The paper argues that Disney's organizational culture — grounded in innovation, quality, storytelling, and decency — is the primary driver of both employee satisfaction and the "magical" customer experience that keeps guests returning to its theme parks.
- Introduction and Background: Disney's theme park origins and success overview
- The Disney Institute and Training Programs: Disney Institute curriculum and broader corporate adoption
- Prospective Employee Screening: Pre-hire video, conduct rules, and same-day hiring
- Employee Satisfaction and Internal Communication: 120-question survey and biweekly cast member newsletter
- Disney's Organizational Culture and Performance Excellence: Core values and Performance Excellence change initiative
- Disney's Formula: Hiring for Attitude: Attitude-first hiring and executive participation in operations
- Summary and Conclusion: Synthesis of Disney's organizational behavior model
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds abstract organizational behavior concepts in concrete, real-world examples from a recognizable global company, making the analysis immediately accessible.
- Uses direct quotations from multiple sources to support each claim, giving the paper a solid evidentiary foundation throughout its sections.
- Maintains a clear thesis — that Disney's screening, training, and culture-building practices are the root of its success — and returns to it consistently in the conclusion.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper applies an organizational behavior framework (structure, culture, and human resource practices) as a consistent analytical lens, evaluating Disney's business practices against each dimension in turn. This structured application of a theoretical framework to a single case study is a standard and effective undergraduate research technique that keeps the argument focused and evaluable.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a thesis statement and introduction, then provides historical and conceptual background on Disney's theme parks. It proceeds section by section through specific organizational behavior mechanisms — the Disney Institute, employee screening, training orientation ("Traditions"), satisfaction surveys, organizational culture, and the company's hiring philosophy — before drawing conclusions in a summary that ties back to the opening thesis. Each section functions as a discrete case element within the broader argument.
Introduction and Background
The Walt Disney Company has gone through many phases over the course of its history, claiming overwhelming success while also necessarily acknowledging periods of failure. This paper argues that Disney has achieved great success through the implementation of customer-responsive organizational behavior practices, and that this success can be attributed to effective strategies within the company's structure, culture, and human resource management.
The theme park concept was pioneered by Walt Disney with the goal of creating "a unique entertainment experience that combined fantasy and history, adventure, and learning in which the guest would be a participant, as well as a spectator" (Grant, nd). Disney-designed theme parks are located in Florida and California in the United States, as well as in Japan and France. All of the parks are divided into distinct themed lands — among them Main Street, Frontierland, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, and Adventureland — each designed to immerse guests in a particular atmosphere. Rides, food, souvenirs, and even employee costumes are themed to match the land in which they are located.
Grant (nd) states that Disney's success "can be traced to the control of the environment to create a unique experience for the visitor. This control is achieved through highly systematized operations management and human resource management. Disney has sophisticated procedures for selecting and training employees to ensure the highest levels of service, safety, and maintenance in the industry."
The importance of people to Disney's model was captured early by Walt Disney himself, who once said: "You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality" (Walt Disney, in Waltz, 2007). This statement illustrates his early recognition that strategic training and organizational behavior methods were essential to creating an environment successful in terms of both customers and customer-responsive employees.
Bibliography
Grant, Robert M. (nd). Euro-Disney: From Dream to Nightmare, 1987–94. Case Fourteen.
Shuit, Douglas P. (2004). Magic for Sale. Workforce Management, September 2004, pp. 35–40.
Waltz, Johnny (2007). The Magic of Disney's Organizational Behavior Concepts. 23 September 2007. Associated Content. Online available at:
Witchel, Arnie (nd). A Model for Implementation of Organizational Development in the Human Resources Area — Organizational Development Model for Human Resources. Witchel & Associates. Online available at:
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