Max Weber's Theory of Rationalization

Office Space provides many examples of the rationalization of the workforce. According to Weber, Rationalization is the process of replacing the traditional and emotional thought with reason and practicality.Weber believed that most societies throughout history were governed by tradition and that the most significant trend in modern sociology is an increasing rationalization of every part of our daily lives. The movie Office Space is an example of rationalization in society. The assumption of the movie is that the main

McDonaldization of society- the process by which ordinary aspects of life are rationalized and efficiency comes to rule them, including such things as food preparation p. 173

Weber argued that modern societies are characterized increasingly by a process of rationalization meaning that the world is increasingly governed by rationality in which tradition and affective forms of action are replaced by predominantly rational forms. This leads to disenchantment being seen as secularization, including the progressive disposal of non-rational elements from all spheres of life.  Weber feared that this process of rationalization would drive out the warmth and humanity of social life, the very things that give meaning to human existence.

He compares fast food owners to religious leaders when he says, “Like other charismatic leaders of new faiths, Kroc asked people to give up their former lives and devote themselves fully to McDonalds” (Schlosser,95). Schlosser is emphasizing through the example that franchisees were expected to take on a restaurant as if it were a new religion, and absorb fast-food values instead of religious ones. Through tough contracts, and high franchising fees, the author makes it clear that the restaurant owners of today are expected to make the same commitments. This is due to the industry’s premise that “the meek shall no longer inherit the earth; the go-getters will get it and everything that goes with it” (Schlosser,106). This mentality is blasphemous to traditional, more humble beliefs, but Schlosser explains by these words that traditional religion “seems hopelessly out of date” (Schlosser,106) in our fast paced society. The result is that there is a wide gap between those who are money-making, and the typical worker. Schlosser describes this new way of thinking as a sort of fast-food religion, which widens the gap between those who are successful, and those who

Throughout the best selling non-fiction novel, Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser dissects franchised food corporations and the industry that supplies these corporations. By revealing the history of of self made men who captured the American Dream such as Walt Disney and Ray Kroc, Schlosser convinces the reader that the road to riches was paved with self serving corporations. It is these corporations who intensified and widened the gap between the rich and poor. Schlosser makes persuasive arguments in Fast Food Nation, showing the reader that there are evils associated with big business and the general public is easily swayed to believe the fantasies these corporations regurgitates. Schlosser uses the three basic appeals known as ethos,

Eric Schlosser starts with the scenery of Colorado Springs, how in just three decades it went from vast, open nature, to having fast food restaurants placed anywhere and everywhere readily accessible. A majority of land withholding pure nature and free roaming animals was a view to others, the opportunity to place mass fast food corporations. These mass fast food corporations have not only broadened the American’s average diet, it has also affected the landscape, culture, and the overall economy of America. The culture of the average citizen’s meal included going to the grocery store to buy food staples such as vegetables or meat, that were to be prepared later for homemade meals. Nowadays, the popular culture of American citizens is to hit

Max Weber used the bureaucracy to represent how the society changes over time whereas Ritzer sees fast food restaurants as a better way to describe how societies change and become more of a contemporary thought pattern. Ritzer understands McDonaldization as a process in which it is slowly taking over the world, he says it can be summarised by just one small quote “the principle of fast food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of the American society as well as the rest of the world” (Ritzer 2008). He states that the past, present and future of McDonalization has appeared from the iron cage to fast food restaurants which shows that rationalisation is still developing, the iron cage is a way to describe it in the past and McDonaldization helps to describe it in today’s society, rationalisation will continue to progress until other contemporary sociologist find different ways to define it. Although McDonaldization offers many advantages as it gives customers quick food at low prices it also has disadvantages just like the bureaucracy they both suffer from irrationality, like fast food restaurants a bureaucracy can be a ‘dehumanising’ place to work and be served by. Many things are developed by technical devises rather than the human hand (Wynyard 1998)

Office Space provides many examples of the rationalization of the workforce. According to Weber, Rationalization is the process of replacing the traditional and emotional thought with reason and practicality.Weber believed that most societies throughout history were governed by tradition and that the most significant trend in modern sociology is an increasing rationalization of every part of our daily life. The movie Office Space is an example

McDonald’s is a drive thru restaurant where customers need to wait in line to order as well as pick up their food. This is likely the most dehumanising aspect of the company since they treated people as parts of an assembly line. Moreover, routinization such as maximising managerial control can be found in McDonald’s and it is related to the idea of Taylorism. Where Max Weber used bureaucratic model to describe the movement of the shifting society, George Ritzer believed the operation of fast food restaurants have become a more suitable contemporary paradigm in modern community. Therefore, Ritzer introduced his idea of McDonaldization in 1993 and it comprises four key dimensions: efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. Among these components, ‘control’ represents workers become standardized and nonhuman technologies would substitute for them. He declared that the principles of fast food restaurant would dominate more and more regions of American society and throughout the world. In fact, apart from food industry, McDonaldization expands all over the world which include bookstores (B.Dalton’s) and toy stores (Toys R Us) (Ritzer, 1993:1).

George Ritzer, in his book The McDonaldization of Society, has given a good understanding of the kind of world we live in. He describes the concept of McDonaldization, which is the process in which the principles that form the basis of McDonalds are greatly influencing the rest of society. McDonalds runs its business on the following key elements: efficiency, calculability, predictability and control by non-human technologies. A fifth element, which Ritzer perceives as a disadvantage of McDonaldization, is the irrationality of rationality. This is the idea that a society which is based entirely on rationality is not a normal human society because humans are not

Weber states that organizations regulations are formed by few people and this people are the boss, administration employee who tends to have representation powers (Roth and Wittich, 1968). Weber states that the state tends to use bureaucracy on its people in order to establish authority. Bureaucracy is present in various areas in the environment and once bureaucracy is produced then it becomes difficult to

George Ritzer 's book The McDonaldization of Society opened and exposed one of what can be considered societies major flaws: McDonaldization. Ritzer suggests that in the late 20th century the socially structured form of the fast-food restaurant has become the organizational force representing and pushing rationalization further into everyday lives and individual identity. Henry Ford was the first McDonaldization pioneer with his vision of an assembly line for improving the production of automobiles. His revolutionary idea dramatically changed how many automobiles could be produced and was very efficient.

McDonaldization involves a process of rationalization described by George Ritzer that is utilized by sociologists (Ritzer 292). Ritzer elaborates the aspect of McDonaldization of society is manifested in situations, for example, where a society adopts the features of a fast-food joints. Worth a note, fast-foods are growing very popular because they highly fits with most individual contemporary lifestyle.

Today’s society and culture is becoming more and more McDonaldized. This paper will illustrate what the process of McDonaldization is. In addition, this paper will show how today’s society has adapted to this process along with using the theories from Max Weber.

Rationalization is the most general element of Weber's theory. As per this theory, Weber saw the modern society as a growing rationalized society. People were moving away from the traditional beliefs which were based on superstitions, custom and religion. More and more people now started engaging in rational and instrumental calculations. This led to the development of science, modern technology and bureaucracy. Bureaucracy was regarded as an example of rationality by Weber. A capitalist society has more bureaucracy which leads to it being more rationalized. This happens because in a capitalist society you need bureaucracy at all levels as you need to make sure you are managing the society well. The more advanced the society becomes, more the laws develop. But at the same time Weber believed that rationalization is an iron cage. The reasons are pretty obvious. A rationalized society has way too many laws. Too much regulation at every level makes the people feel like they've been kept in a