Control Mechanisms: The Walt Disney Company: Team project

Control Mechanisms: The Walt Disney Company Introduction Organizations use control mechanisms to help regulate guidelines and procedures which contribute toward effectively achieving organizational goals. The Walt Disney Company is a well known entertainment organization that has become tremendously successful both nationally and internationally over the past 70 years or so partly through successful implementation of control mechanisms throughout every aspect of the organization. The purpose of this paper is to explore four types of control mechanisms used by the Walt Disney Company: (1) budgetary, (2) financial, (3) management audit, and (4) bureaucratic through compare and contrast to determine the effectiveness of each by examining the positive and negative reactions to these control mechanisms in order to explain how the different control mechanisms impact the four functions of management throughout the organization.

Budgetary Controls Budgetary controls are a well known and frequently used control measure throughout corporate America and the international business market system.

The Walt Disney Studios, the headquarters of The W...

Walt Disney giving the dedication day speech July ...

A view of downtown Celebration, Florida: the city ...

Budgetary controls are used to align the various company operating costs with the company's strategic goals and to either verify goal attainment or to plan corrective action. Throughout its existence, Walt Disney has implemented many different budgetary controls reaching across numerous and diverse product lines.

With the motion picture production division, production budgets were used to limit expenses for the cost of materials and equipment, talented actors, various support staff, and the marketing and placement of movies into circulation. As Walt Disney expanded its business to include multiple elaborate theme parks, a capital budget was created to establish a threshold on the cost of real estate, buildings and equipment, and the operating and maintenance costs.

When the company decided to venture into the production of toys and clothing, the management designed and implemented a sales budget to manage the increased cost of entering a new market. With...