Intercultural Communication
Intercultural Communication in Multinational Corporations Why is the Walt Disney Company so successful?
跨国公司中的跨文化交际 华特迪士尼公司何以如此成功？
A Thesis Proposal Submitted to Foreign Languages Department In Candidate for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts
By
Liu, Meng Supervised by Professor Fan, Peilin
Capital University of Economics and Business Beijing, 12/2011
Introduction As the process of globalization develops continuously, multinational corporations are much more common nowadays which means intercultural communication has become an important part of daily work in thousands of millions of cross-cultural offices. This thesis will mainly concentrate on discussing and analyzing the Walt Disney Company’s experience of intercultural communication and the useful information we can learn from it so that some misunderstandings and problems can be avoided in some business activities. This thesis will discuss and answer the following questions: 1. What is the Walt Disney Company? 2. What is a cross-cultural working environment like in the Walt Disney World Resort, Orlando, Florida? How do the coordinators deal with different employers from different cultures? 3. What happened when Disney first entered French market? What happened when it first entered Japan? What are the cultural reasons behind these different phenomena? 4. Comparing to other multinational corporations like Starbucks and Ikea, what is the advantage of Disney and what can we use for reference from its experience? Some researches have already been done on related subjects such as intercultural communication management, the importance of cross-cultural communication in business, and the effectiveness of intercultural communication in Human Resource area, etc. Based on these researches, however, my view point as a cast member of the Walt Disney World Resort can be creative and objective.
Chapter I
跨国公司中的跨文化交际 华特迪士尼公司何以如此成功？
A Thesis Proposal Submitted to Foreign Languages Department In Candidate for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts
By
Liu, Meng Supervised by Professor Fan, Peilin
Capital University of Economics and Business Beijing, 12/2011
Introduction As the process of globalization develops continuously, multinational corporations are much more common nowadays which means intercultural communication has become an important part of daily work in thousands of millions of cross-cultural offices. This thesis will mainly concentrate on discussing and analyzing the Walt Disney Company’s experience of intercultural communication and the useful information we can learn from it so that some misunderstandings and problems can be avoided in some business activities. This thesis will discuss and answer the following questions: 1. What is the Walt Disney Company? 2. What is a cross-cultural working environment like in the Walt Disney World Resort, Orlando, Florida? How do the coordinators deal with different employers from different cultures? 3. What happened when Disney first entered French market? What happened when it first entered Japan? What are the cultural reasons behind these different phenomena? 4. Comparing to other multinational corporations like Starbucks and Ikea, what is the advantage of Disney and what can we use for reference from its experience? Some researches have already been done on related subjects such as intercultural communication management, the importance of cross-cultural communication in business, and the effectiveness of intercultural communication in Human Resource area, etc. Based on these researches, however, my view point as a cast member of the Walt Disney World Resort can be creative and objective.
Chapter I
References: of Disney’s Experience Comparison will be made in this part between Disney and other multinational corporations and some useful references we can get so as to use them to avoid misunderstandings, sometimes even serious problems in business field. Reference 1. http://disneyworld.disney.go.com 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Company 3. 周迎 范晓斌， 经济全球化背景下跨国企业中的文化差异与文化移情，2007（10） Conclusion This thesis will analyze intercultural communication in multinational corporations based on the successful experience of the Walt Disney World dealing with related issues. From this paper, readers can get a deeper understanding of cross-cultural communication which can definitely be useful not only in their daily work communicating with their co-workers from all over the world, but also avoiding some serious problems during the globalization process of their corporation.