The McDonaldization of Society (Essay Sample)

The McDonaldization of Society Student Name College Course Instructor Name Date The McDonaldization of Society Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to examine a business organization through a sociological lens. Students will apply the concepts of the McDonaldization of Society, rationalization, alienation, and the "iron cage" to a business of their choice. Task: After reading about George Ritzer's concept of the McDonaldization of society, think of another example (organization) besides the fast food industry where you believe this concept may be applied.  Several good examples may be Amazon.com, Walmart, or General Motors. 1 First, in your own words, explain McDonaldization, including a discussion of the dimensions Ritzer outlines (efficiency, predictability, calculability/quantity, nonhuman technology, control).  Please use your organization as an example. Describe how each dimension of McDonaldization applies to your organization. Also, discuss what might be the advantages and disadvantages of each dimension for the organization. McDonaldization occurs when a society, its establishments, and its organization are structured to bear similar features to those of fast-food management (Ritzer, 2011). To explain this, I will use the example of Amazon.com organization. The key features of McDonaldization include: Efficiency: In Amazon.com, this aspect is achieved through a management focus on reducing production and distribution time. Amazon customers can efficiently get into the system and complete the buying and delivery process with a click of the mouse. Predictability: This feature is utilized in recurring and routine activities in service delivery and matching output of customer experiences. With Amazon, a series of online predictable, systematic steps achieves an order completion. Calculability: this aspect focuses on quantifying items. With the Amazon system, all prices of products and services are marked, and customers can quantify the things before purchasing. Nonhuman technology and Control: Within Amazon, the administration exercises this aspect to guarantee that employees appear and perform the same way while carrying out their daily duties. The system is set to control the shopper and attend to them as quickly as possible. Using nonhuman technology, Amazon controls shopping, and customers can only purchase items on the site and cannot modify objects to quantities and qualities they may want to demand. The advantages of McDonaldization include accessibility to a wide variety of goods and services and a large fraction of consumers (Ritzer & Miles, 2019). In addition, Amazon can maximize profits since the website can do a lot of work that would require the company to hire human workers in its absence. The disadvantages of this phenomenon are that its primary focus on rationalization is most likely to produce unreasonableness. The rationality aspect limits human reasoning and its presence in performing activities due to the institution's rigid observance of set rules. Workers are also likely to feel degraded as this phenomenon rarely utilizes the skilled workforce. McDonaldization requires that the employees only engage in monotonous and focused routine tasks. Another downside is that McDonaldization takes away employees' bargaining power because the functions can be inexpensively taught to replace labor. When it comes to consumers, the McDonaldization phenomenon socializes customers to complete the production process, thereby helping the company to achieve control and effectiveness. 2 Provide some comments on the significance of McDonaldization for your example. Do you believe McDonaldization makes the organization you observed operate better or not? Why or why not? Define and describe the concept of the "irrationality of rationality," and describe whether or not this concept is seen in your selected organization. Why or why not? The significance of McDonaldization for Amazon is to offer a model of retailing that makes the work of purchasing various products very efficiently and eliminates lengthy queues at the stores (Khan et al., 2022). Indeed, McDonaldization makes Amazon operate better since customers have the luxury of online buying door delivery as quickly as a day. It improves efficiency and helps...