Mcdonaldization a reply to ritzers thesis
McDonaldization is a cultural process associated with increasing global homogeneity or sameness. Increasing businesses are becoming foundationally based on similar principles and processes.
The more the company adjusts to local conditions, the more appeal the scientific calculations of the specifically American product may be lost.
Even student unions have come to resemble shopping malls with their many dining options and handy ATM machines.
Like the customers in a fast-food restaurant, students do most of the work of educating themselves, interacting more often with a computer than a teacher. To be sure, a footnote here and there includes a reference to critical theory, but a rigorous application of it is absent from his argument.
The first principle, predictability, is that you will find everything within your predicting capability.
De-McDonaldization Organizations have been making an effort to deny the rationalization of McDonaldization. When I first read about it, I was pretty surprised. Moreover, through McDonaldization, the distinction between the customer and employee is disappearing.
It is thought provoking, amusing, and disturbing. Five principles associated with McDonaldization include efficiency, calculability, predictability, control through technology, and irrationality of rationality.
Mcdonaldization a reply to ritzers thesis
Moreover, through McDonaldization, the distinction between the customer and employee is disappearing. The more the company adjusts to local conditions, the more appeal the scientific calculations of the specifically American product may be lost. The work is predictable and workers are controlled by non-human technologies, rendering them robot-like. Of course, the author concedes that there are those who still seek the alternative, but they must be wary that once such alternatives become popular, and the enterprising sort deem them profitable, they will be subject to McDonaldization as well. It continues to be a huge trend and a very successful process. They are extremely predictable, in both the job process but also labor production. It is thought provoking, amusing, and disturbing. This type of rationalization is seen in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. Typically, these jobs involve a series of simple tasks, which the worker is expected to perform efficiently and within a specified time period. Organizations want consumers to believe that they are getting a large amount of product for not a lot of money.In practice the interpretation and execution of policy can lead to informal influence. The entertaining discussion of postmodern responses to McDonaldization in the chapter on dealing with the new means of consumption focus on combating the code by, for instance, intentionally overpaying for a Big Mac or asking that it be made rare.
