Question

First, think about how much McDonaldization you think is present in your life, providing some examples. Then, consider whether you would like this to change, by reflecting on the positive and negative consequences of McDonaldization for you, including a consideration of our core value of community. You may want to focus on only one or two changes.Finally, think about how you might go about implementing such change(s), also thinking how that might relate to the core value of community.

Answer 1

The concept McDonaldization is given by the American sociologist George Ritzer in his book The McDonaldization of Society (1993). He defines 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.' Ritzer observes four primary components of McDonaldization: efficiency, calculability, predictability and control.

For Ritzer, efficiency stands for the optimal method for accomplishing a task. When you enter the McDonald's as a customer waiting for your order. According to the Mcdonalds model, this waiting time should be minimal so that the customer is happy as well as the restaurant is able to get more customers and maximise profit and hence efficient.

Predictability means that every time and wherever in the customer goes to the McDonaldized organisation he /she will receive the same service and receive the same product. The same applies to the workers in those organizations. Their tasks are highly repetitive, highly routine, and predictable.

In an effort to be more rational contemporary societies are becoming more and more uniform, impersonal and dehumanizing. Ritzer employed McDonald as a metaphor to explain how rationality has become irrational. The popularity of the restaurant itself is a perfect example of rationalization because traditional, home-cooked family meals have been replaced with meals of practicality and convenience but at the same time; fast food is no longer fast, there are long lines and the taste of the food is also not that good. These organisations as a setting are dehumanizing as people working here cannot always behave like human beings.