Cultural Differences Faced by Disneyland

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
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Cultural Differences
Started in California, Disneyland is an American theme park. Following its success in California, it opened in Florida and Tokyo, where greater levels of success were also recorded. Riding on this wave of success, Walt Disney ventured into Europe opening the first theme park in France. The company justifiably had huge expectations for the new venture considering the success recorded in the previous locations. However, after its opening in 1992, Disney faced various challenges. Cultural differences were among the main challenges the company faced (Luthans and Doh 2012, p. 265). This paper seeks to explore these challenges.
Question 1
Geert Hofstede developed Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory. It describes the effects of the values of a society on the behavior of its people. The dimensions of national cultures include power distance index, individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity versus femininity, among others (Beugelsdijk et al. 2017, p. 45). A number of these dimensions can be identified from Walt Disney’s ventures in the United States and France. Power distance is the most prominent of the dimensions between the two countries. The power distance index measures the degree to which a society accepts unequal distribution of powers. The power distance index is lower in the US than in France. Greater equality between the various levels of society exists in the US. The case study bares how the French feel like foreigners in their country when advertisements were made in English.
Moreover, most supervisors were Americans and did not speak good French. The uncertainty avoidance index is the measure of the degree to which ambiguous situations threaten people. It is higher in France than in America. This is confirmed by the predominantly American theme in Euro Disney. The number of people who attended the euro Disneyland shows confirms that the French are highly ambiguous. Individualism is the measure of the extent to which people look after themselves as opposed to collectivism. It is relatively high in both countries. This is confirmed when the French require that men’s hair should be short and banned beards by their traditions. Masculinity is the measure of the extent to which the society places value on money and success. Masculinity is higher in the US than in France. To confirm this, the French culture was not taken as a priority when Euro Disney was launched.
Question 2
Trompenaars explain cultural differences between the US and France regarding universalism versus particularism, neutral versus emotional, specific versus diffuse, and according to time orientation. Under universalism versus particularism, universalistic nations such as the US tend to place more focus on formal rules rather than on relationships. Such countries frequently ignore the culture of other nations such as in the predominant American theme in Euro Disney. Particularistic countries put more emphasis on relationships (Trompenaars and Greene 2016, p. 70). Neutral cultures keep their emotions in check while emotional countries freely express their emotions. B...