McDonaldization

1. McDonaldization • 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 • Seen in education, work, criminal justice, health care, travel and leisure, dieting, family, religion and virtually every other aspect of society

2. George Ritzer’s Analogy of McDonaldization • Efficiency • Calculability • Predictability • Control

3. George Ritzer’s Analogy of McDonaldization • Efficiency: best means to an end, optimum method

4. George Ritzer’s Analogy of McDonaldization • Calculability or Quantifiability

5. George Ritzer’s Analogy of McDonaldization • Predictability through standardization

6. George Ritzer’s Analogy of McDonaldization • Control of humans, both workers and consumers, by use of technology: • strict training, narrow tasks, close supervision • limited menu of choices, few options, and controlled environment • remove or distance humans from the process entirely

7. Advantages of McDonaldization • Wider range of good and services available to more people in more places • Able to get what you want instantly and conveniently • Goods and services are far more uniform and consistent • Far more economical • People have less time efficiency helps

8. Advantages of McDonaldization • McDonaldized systems offer comfort and stability in a rapidly changing world • Easy to compare competing products which empowers the consumer • Some things benefit from closely regulated and controlled system (like weight loss) • People are likely to be treated similarly • Innovation diffuses more rapidly • Popular things move from culture to culture rapidly

9. The Irrationality of Rationality • Rational systems are not less expensive (externalities) • They force people to do unpaid work • They are often inefficient for the consumer/client • Dehumanizing • Alienating

10. Max Weber's Model of Bureaucracy • How to maximize technical capacity and efficiency • 1. Criterion for personnel selection & advancement: • technical merit to perform task • guards against nepotism and other personal biases

11. Max Weber's Model of Bureaucracy • How to maximize technical capacity and efficiency • 2. Specialized division of labor: • divide, simplify, standardize task • develop narrow, complex expertise

12. Max Weber's Model of Bureaucracy • How to coordinate numerous diverse tasks & people • 3. Written rules (formalization) • handles expected work • generates forms • 4. Hierarchy of authority: • handles exceptions to rules • presumed to be most knowledgeable

13. How to motivate personnel to pursue organizational goals • 5. Impersonality • personal likes/dislikes obscure objectivity • smooth substitution of personnel

14. 6. Incentive system based on money: • generalized, impersonal, expedient • 7. Delimited rights and duties: • authority vested in "offices," not in persons

15. How to establish and change goals • 8. Separate policy and administration: • bureaucrats do not set own goals • outsiders make policy (Board of Directors)

16. Three Critiques of Bureaucracy • Structural-functional theory: the dysfunctional side of bureaucracy • Bureaucratic features designed for efficiency can be dysfunctional. • Efficiency or red tape? • Efficient for whom? Customers as unpaid workers. • Goal displacement • Predictability and standardization can be dehumanizing • Impersonality masked by "false fraternization": • Increasing homogenization, stifling creativity, imagination, individuality

17. Conflict theory: deskilling the workforce • Babbage principle: divide complex skills into simpler routinized tasks • Hire cheaper, unskilled labor, increases capitalist profits • increases management's control over the production process • Three components to deskilling: • 1. Dissociation of labor process from skills of worker • 2. Separation of conception from execution • 3. Management's monopoly over knowledge of labor process • Workers lose control over production, and over own labor • Linked to McDonaldization: introducing non-human forms of control

18. Deprofessionalization • Three uncertainties in evaluating extent of deskilling: • Does capitalist's pursuit of profit necessarily lead to deskilling? • Does deskilling occur across all jobs, occupations, and industries? • Can deskilling create new, highly skilled intellectual jobs? • Issue turns on the concept of "skill": • Much formal education taken for granted in today's workplace • Average skill levels have improved

19. Symbolic interaction: increasing organizational surveillance • Physical setting of bureaucracy helps define organizational situations • Hierarchical and physical position can coincide: the "top floor,""upstairs" • impact of visibility • Indirect forms of control, supervision and surveillance; invisibility, inability to verify, automation • Files, records, case histories, work evaluations • supplemented by electronic surveillance--"dataveillance“ • Information is consolidated and integrated • Shift in use of personal data: From suspicion leading to an investigation, to routine investigation leading to suspicion

20. Is Bureaucracy Outmoded? • "Reinventing Government" • reforming the Federal Civil Service system created 100 years ago • designed to curb abuse through rules, limitations on authority • assumed most workers are clerks with limited education? • causes system to choke on rules and procedures • allows bureaucrats to abuse authority, possess "secret" knowledge