The fundamental of orthodox management literature is concerned with the efficiency and effectiveness of an organisation. It copes with several problems such as the classical and human relations theory, motivation and leadership. It also assumes that employees are a key asset as well as the society has moved to a Post-Fordism and post-bureaucratic approach. However, orthodox management is only concerned with how the organisation is behaving instead of why the business is conducting in a certain way. Another limitation is that the theory is merely a group of people’s idea so it is always contestable. In this essay, I will describe how the conventional management theory apply to today’s organisations; demonstrate the reality of work through …show more content…
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). In the second seminar, Aditya Chakrabortty’s article ‘Why our jobs are getting worse’ provides us a great standpoint of work reality and explains the reason of why people no longer enjoy going to work. Similar to Ritzer, He believed more and more occupations are changing
The way that Burger King and other fast food restaurant chains do business and markets their products to consumers is due to the change in our society to where the consumer wants the biggest, fastest, and best product they can get for their money. This change in society can be attributed to a process known as McDonaldization. Although McDonaldization can be applied to many other parts of our society, this paper will focus on its impact on Burger King and Taco Bell restaurants. My belief is that the process of McDonaldization has lead our generations toward a more a much more efficient lifestyle, with much less quality. From my observations and studies of these fast food resturants, several themes have become
The film introduces the concept of McDonaldization to the food companies. McDonalds first introduced this concept in the first fast food chain; the idea was to make the restaurant more efficient. In the 1930’s, McDonalds own a very successful chain of restaurants, but they McDonald brothers wanted to expand their brand; while doing this they would revolutionize the restaurant industry. They would hire employees to do only one just, such as cooking the fries, and this would be the only thing the employee would do all day at work. The purpose was to be able to get food out faster and hire workers for lower wages because of the small amount of responsibilities the worker would have. The restaurant would fire all the extra employees and simplify the menu, and then the first fast food restaurant would be born. The concept of McDonaldization spread to many other restaurants and is still in use today. The idea of McDonaldization also made its way to meat packing companies; the assembly line concept will be used. Employees do the same demeaning task all day, and their pay reflects the low level of creativity. Many other businesses have incorporated the idea of simplifying decisions and decreasing the time it takes to make a sale. Think about the mall, every store is laid out and organized in a manner where
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)
McDonaldization effects all aspects of today’s society—even the venues we often overlook. Two examples of some commonly overlooked McDonaldized venues are the Kimmel Center and the Hard Rock Cafe. Both of these venues emphasize the McDonald elements of success according to George Ritzer: efficiency, Calculability, predictability, and control. (14, Ritzer). Although these places may feel like a luxurious break from the everyday fast food trip, they are not all that much different.
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
The impact of the McDonaldization is seen in a consumer’s life at least everyday. It was enlightening to be given the opportunity to learn about this process by visiting a local restaurant called Schlotzsky’s. During my hour there, I learned how McDonaldization is all around the consumers and they should stop and take the time to learn about the effects of the industrialization of the fast food industry.
McDonaldization is becoming the new wave of job types where workers are being deskilled, dehumanized and exploited. Machines are taking over tasks which the employees used to do such as bank machines (interact). The McDonaldized jobs now instead of making the employee do all the work they have the customer working too, for example when the customer cleans up after eating. These jobs are becoming less interactive and personal because workers are becoming dehumanized and only allowed to follow a script, there is also the fact that fast food Company’s use drive through, where limited interaction occurs and are many restrictions. These types of jobs which the author George Ritzer labeled
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.
. Through his research which states that by simply neglecting the variety and diversity of consumer practices in different regions and parts of the world and the various uses to which consumers can put McDonaldization, using its products and procedures to serve their own needs. There are many ways Mcdonaldization can be resisted in: social institution, education, the economy, family, as well as religion and military that our society can reverse the effects on the way we live.
The twentieth century has brought in a number of management theories which have helped shaped our view of management in the present business environment. These emerging theories have enabled managers to appreciate new patterns of thinking, new ways of organising and new ways of managing organisations and people. Over the years these different theories have enabled the study
George Ritzer describes McDonaldization as “the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world”. McDonaldization is the idea that our society is becoming more efficient and more fast paced. Rational systems can be defined as “unreasonable, dehumanizing systems that deny the humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within them or are served by them”.1 Today there are many types of businesses that are increasingly adapting the same values and principles of the fast-food industry to their needs. Rational systems are dehumanizing our society and seem to be even more irrational than convenient. “Almost every aspect of
McDonald’s is one of the biggest companies in the world with restaurants in 119 countries and it has accomplished this extraordinary global presence through its effective management practices. McDonald’s uses a combination of Fredrik Taylor’s scientific management, Max Weber’s hierarchical structure, and Henri Fayol’s administrative principles to run its restaurants. McDonald’s has become a mechanistic organization by making its restaurant environment predictable. McDonald’s has developed set management structure and a predetermined set of procedures for running its restaurants. As a result, McDonald’s has come to resemble a machine where employees are like components of the big McDonald’s machine.
The core of management texts are concerned with efficiency, both bureaucratic and post bureaucratic organisations. The limitation is that it concerns itself with how, and not why the organising is done in a particular way. I will introduce some of the early theorists, looking at how they apply to organisations today and reflecting on employees work experience through weblogs. Seminar discussion points will be portrayed in this paper to further emphasise reality. As time progresses, peoples attitudes to work changes and I will show how people now strive for motivation, responsibility, and quality of life rather than having
In the early 1900’s, some of the first ideas were thrown together to allow an organization to flourish in the upcoming modern era. The first theories were known as scientific and classical management, which focused on three separate theories from Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol, and Max Weber. The three theories have similar ideology in the fact that organization is driven by management authority, employees only source of motivation is money, and organizations are machinelike with employees making up the parts of the machine (Papa, Daniels, & Spiker, 2008). In the Prophecy Fulfilled case study, Mary Ann (senior auditor) takes on a management role with subordinates similar to that of Weber’s Bureaucratic Theory (Daniels 1987, pp. 77-78).
The history of management has been grouped into phases of development. Classical Management was introduced in the beginning of the 201th century. This addresses the organization’s search for efficiency on the basis that people will work for themselves and be economically beneficial. In other words, they work because they are determined by the economic concerns. Workers are expected to accept every opportunity that comes and they must work for it to achieve a personal and financial improvement. All of this has been supported by 3 theories in which the companies still used it today.