An Analysis of Walt Disney's Social Performance: Environment and Human Rights

Introduction

Gronvius and Lerborg (2009, 29) stated that the current public or communities have increasingly rapid demand of greater transparency from the business that is highly responsible for their performances with great contribution to the society. From the perspective of Gronvius and Lernborg (2009, 29), they has explored that the companies will not only achieve the success of gaining a positive financial results, but also enhance the financial performance for stakeholders if they have good implementation of several activities which benefits the whole society. The competitors who are not interested in social activities or have poor implementation strategies will have high certainties to be outperformed by the other companies that are aware of the importance of conducting CSR practices in the societies. This study examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance for a sample of lodging and gaming companies. The study attempts to answer the question: do lodging and gaming companies ranked highly on CSR initiatives outperform their counterparts that are not highly ranked? The study utilizes data of publicly traded U.S. hospitality firms obtained from the CRSP and Mergent databases. The study also uses the Fortune CSR ranking survey for hotels and casinos. The findings suggest that lodging and gaming firms with well-executed CSR initiatives have higher profit margins and higher return on equity than the rest of the sampled firms.(Jackson and Hua 2009, 63). One of the remarkable characteristic that highlights the reputation of Walt Disney is that the company is known as the leading party which consider their commitment of corporate social responsibility as the most integral part to develop their brand (The Walt Disney 2013). According to Sanders (2018), for many decades, the public has globally recognized Walt Disney as the successful founder and pioneer in developing the children and adult-oriented cartoons in the animation industry. Mickey Mouse is a typical name that contributes to their core achievement and strive them to become a reputative brand in the world. Beside being the producer of animation, the company also expand their business to be the provider of other entertainment segments such as; constructing a large number of theme parks and world class-animation studio (Sanders 2018). This report will use the CSR as the measure to examine how the stakeholders are positively and negatively influenced by the company's actions relating to two key social aspects which are the environmental sustainability and human rights. The typical action that represent the positive manner of the company in performing the corporate public policies is their environmental campaign on protecting the threatened forest. The business scandal of sexual harrassment is one of the crticial controversies that demonstrate the negative behavior of walt disney in violating the human rights principle proposed in social contract

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Positive Case for the Walt Disney’s Company: The Prevention of Deforestration in Peru

Walt Disney is acknowledged as one of the successful organization in managing and solving environmental issue with the honor of being the environmental leader of the year which is granted by Governor's environmental and economic leadership award (Walt Disney Parks 2015). Among the numerous practices of green protection and environmental sustainabilities such as waste management, water conservation, and product footprint's strategies, protecting forests is the primary scope of the company to enhance the livelihood of local communities and provide economic benefits to the farmers by promoting more activities of planting trees to recover the deforestration (The Walt Disney 2009). The motive behind the greatest effort of Walt Disney in the deforestration's prevention project is the environmentally controversial number of emmision rates as well as the critical rate of trees being constantly lodged. It was reported that there was a disappereance of approximately 50,000 square miles of the forest all around the world, which has raised the comparision that the reported number of deforestration is considered to be as large as the size of Pennsylvannia (The Walt Disney 2009). Moreover, The threats to the environment is more allarming since the clearance of tropical forests which has been calculated to be roughly 20 percent of the greenhouse gas pollution in the world, and more than the other combined polluting factors such as planes, ships, trains, and cars (The Walt Disney 2009). CEO Robert A. lger has a strong commitment to the project of protecting the forests with a clear statement that "Now, more than ever, it's essential to take swift action to preserve our most vulnerable natural environments for future generations and to be innovative in achieving goals.

Relating to the reduction of cutting trees, the company has created a Peru's project by signing a partnership's agreement with Conservation International to implement proper farming practices of stimulating more growing trees, especially the organic coffee in Peru which is growth in the region of San Marin (Escobar 2013). In order to sustain the growth of more coffee trees after the deforestration primarily due to the lodging activities, the collaboration between the two companies has introduced various sustainable farming methods such as stimulating the growth of coffees in the shade, pruning coffee trees, and making organic compost (Terrell 2017). Moreover, the two companies provide the farmers with a technical package with content about planing instruction (Escobar 2013). The package encourage the farmers not to use the herbicides and offer a training for farmers on how to sow coffee as properly as growing the native trees. The valuable knowledge and trainings passed on the farmers has restricted them from depleting the soil since lack of soil will force farmers to find a healthy soil by relocating and cutting down trees more frequently (Escobar 2013). As the farmers get used to applying the introduced practice to sustain the agriculture, the disease which is caused by the coffee leaf's rust has been reduced dramatically. The farmers can recover their production's acitivities after elminating the coffee rust's disease that damages 20 percent of Peru's total coffee production per year (Escobar 2013). The cooperation between Walt Disney and Conservational International has benefited the local people as substantially as enhancing the ecosystem. The Peru's project has brought a magnificent result that has influenced more than 240,000 people who have a dependence of well-being on Alto Mayo Basin located in Peru (Terrell 2017). The farmers started to earn higher income for their premium coffee due to the effective production that has created the substantial increase in the quantities and qualities of the coffee (Terrell 2017). The activities of exploiting more trees to make an expansion of their farming areas has also been dramatically reduced (Terrell 2017).

Negative Case for the Walt's Disney Company

Despite the numerous positive corporate social responsibility programs by Walt Disney that has been mainly on environmental conservation, the company has experienced several setbacks in other corporate social responsibility programs. The major setback and negative picture that has tainted Walt Disney as a dark brand, is its racial profiling and stereotyping cases that has left the public criticizing the company for several years of its existence. Racial profiling and stereotyping has been rampant on Walt Disney's production, more so on its animation films, and also on its employees overtime. The bias on Walt Disney's negative corporate social responsibility on the aspect of health and human rights. The racial discrimination and stereotyping cases began ages ago when the company started producing its famous animations such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, where they referred to the dwarfs piling on each other as 'nigger pile.' This was a racism statement that referred to the black community in a racism word that was being used by the white community in their racial profiling of the black community.

The insensitivity of Walt Disney in its production did not stop with the animation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, rather it went further to include more than six other animation films. The public ranted that Walt Disney's employees were racists and lacked the observation of basic human rights in their promotion of racism. In the animation film; Song of the South, the story depicts the promotion of slavery and racial profiling in the use of the term, 'pickaninny'. Mickey Mouse is dressed in a black dress in the film Mickey's Mellerdrammer to insinuate stereotypical 'black' shortcomings. The famous animation film, Peter Pan, was constructed with the notion of picturing the Native American "Indians" as being savages as well as poor and uneducated. This notion of racisms, profiling and stereotyping of the minority groups, and the non-whites in Walt Disney films was witnessed in various other films that spanned across; Lady and the Tramp, Dumbo, Fantasia, and Merrie Melodies.

Walt Disney Company was also accused of being anti- Semitism and allegedly spreading subliminal messages in their production which was the product that they delivered to the public, and more so to the kids who were their target market. A lobby group known as the American Life League (ALL) accused Walt Disney of promoting subliminal message and sexual imageries in their films, where they pointed out the films. The subliminal and sexual imageries were known to be against the human rights clause, and Walt Disney was in violation of them especially given that their target audience were children who were grasping every little message sent to them. The films that ALL pointed out were; The Rescuers, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and the famous animation; The Lion King. The most notable controversy of Walt Disney's production was the film; Laserdisc, which was produced in 1994, and caught the eye of the public and rant of the media due to its popularity in proposition of nudity of Jessica Rabbit character as well as other scenes of subliminal antics. The company responded to the claims of Variety and CNN of highlighting the scenes, by posting an uncouth and unapologetic...