Mngt 5950

Newton Week 6 Case Exercise

1. I would describe the conflict between Michael Eisner and the Weinstein brothers and Steve Jobs as dysfunctional. This is my opinion because they were not able to work together in any function, and both the Weinstein brothers and Steve Jobs called for the resignation of Eisner. The CEO of Disney repeatedly fought with the Weinstein brothers over the purchase of Miramax films (pp. 332). He also had a very public feud with Steve Jobs leading to Jobs starting the Save Disney campaign in an effort to fire Eisner.

3. The approach that Eisner had to problem solving would be avoiding because he never made an effort to repair the relationships with the Weinstein brothers or Steve Jobs while he was the CEO. After feuding with them he should have at least made an effort to repair the relationships in order for the company to be more successful. However, when Bob Iger took over Disney the first thing that he did was repaired the relationships with both the Weinstein brothers and Steve Jobs in order to make Disney more profitable. Because of this his approach to problem solving would be problem solving. He went out of his way to seek all of them out and repair the relationship and make things right between them.

4. I think that by Bob Iger having a calm and less confrontational approach to running Disney has considerably helped the company position itself to survive a major economic recession. This is my opinion because by repairing the relationships that were previously destroyed it opened different partnerships in the future to make money. By being able to sell Disney products through apple allows for Disney to make more money because people can download Disney movies and soundtracks for their IPODs without having to go to stores to do so. This allows people to purchase Disney associated products from the ease of their homes. Which in turn allows Disney to make a profit and provides the customer with an easier avenue of getting...