Is the World becoming McDonaldized?
American society as well as the rest of the world has become a subject to absorbing the standards and principles of McDonaldВ’s fast food restaurant chain. Thus, Ferrante (2014) argues that most sociologists do not view organizations as a different entity from the persons that create them. They normally assert that such organizations have a definite and clear way of life that goes beyond the principles, set by the people engaged in them. This is true as there is evidence of formal organizationsВ’ continuation even after the employees or members stop working for them or die.
This principle of formal organizations having a life of their own depicts the principle of McDonaldization of society as presented by Ritzer. Najafi (2015) asserts that it occurs when society tends to apply the principles of fast food restaurant in other facets and spheres of life. Currently, there are far reaching effects of this principle in many aspects of life, including culture, education sector, and labor systems as well as globalization. This paper will evaluate how the principles of McDonaldization apply to various facets of society, thus showing evidence that the world does become McDonaldized.
Principles of McDonaldization
In the contextualization of this principle, Ritzer builds his foundation upon WeberВ’s principle of rationality. McDonaldization of society borrows the four components of rationalization that dictates the functioning of formal organizations. These four principles include control, efficiency, predictability, and calculability, and they characterize all McDonaldВ’s fast food restaurants; thus, Ritzer believes this replicates in to society today (Engle, 2012). Efficiency is the search for the ideal intends to a given end. It incorporates streamlining forms, disentangling merchandise and enterprises, and utilizing clients to perform work.
Most organizations work hard to achieve the most efficient ways of realizing their goals and objectives, which mostly implies making profits. Thus, the principle of McDonaldization pushes society and more so organizations to have a compelling thirst for efficiency in order to achieve maximum proceeds or profits (Ferrante, 2014). Engle (2012) adds that McDonaldized organizations look for a continuous increase of their effectiveness through streamlining creation and dispersion, rearranging the items themselves, and keeping clients’ activities to a base conceivable time. Wu (2009) asserts that these processes of raising efficiency create a standard means within organizations to achieve the desired objectives. This implies that standardization becomes a core business of organizations so that they could achieve desired goals and products. This principle of efficiency does not only produce desired results but also puts employees under pressure to work under specific standards.
The other principle of McDonaldization is calculability that implies the accentuation on things that can be ascertained, checked, or evaluated. McDonaldization values measurement over subjectivity. This implies that amount has a tendency to end simply as a surrogate for quality, while the accentuation on amount tends to influence unfavorably the nature of both the procedure and the item. This idea of calculability changes everything into numbers, straightforward and unoriginal. Benefits and amounts become plainly vital in this inaccessible, unbending structure (Engle, 2012). Further, Wu (2009) argues that calculability in the industry implies that things in the production procedure ought to be ascertained and measured. Likewise, calculability presupposes sending non-human innovations to perform undertakings in the given measure of time or make results of a given weight or size.
Predictability is the third principle of McDonaldization. Thus, it means concentrating on things, such as systematization, discipline, and routine, with the goal that things are the same, starting with one time or place then onto the next. This goal is accomplished through replications of settings, the utilization of representative scripts, the routinization of worker practices, and offering uniform items. Ferrante (2014) adds that most organizations train specialists to work in a specific way and reward them for a good execution of their duties. However, when specialists are trained to react mechanically or thoughtlessly to their occupation, they tend to become inadequate and unproductive, which manifests in the failure to react to new or abnormal conditions because of little or no training. According to Wu (2009), predictability implies that work association is not just a clean noticeable space but also a principle that can extend globally. In addition, predictability presuppoes the process of script correspondences and communications with clients and among employees.
The last principle of McDonaldization is control. This principle largely means substituting human labor with contemporary technologies that function on behalf of humans. Control also implie