Seminar 2 – People Management & Change - Done by: Sheena & Xiaolian

McDonaldization and its precursors

(From the iron cage to fast-food factory)

Its precursors – bureaucracy, Taylorism and Fordism lead to the rise of McDonald or also
the McDonaldization
Iron cage refers to bureaucracy, as according to Max Weber, these are cages where people
are trapped in them and their basic humanity is denied by them
To better understand McDonaldization, we must first look at the bureaucracy, taylorism
and fordism in organizations.
We have understand from the lectures that bureaucracy can be view as ‘red tape’ due to
the large amounts for paperwork associated, the inefficiency of the hierarchy,
‘officialdom’ due to the largely used by central and local government, and lastly as a
means of organization due to hierarchy of authority(order) and system of rules.
There are different types of authority and one of them that apply to McDonaldization is
rational-legal authority. Bureaucracy is practical and moral; it is irrationality of rationality
as there are no human touch on the tasks given and therefore view as inefficiencies.
Formal rationality is the methods chosen to achieve a given end are the most appropriate
and efficient. People in the organization simply follow rules, regulation and dictates of
the structure. There is less room for individual variation in choice of means to end as it
was guided or even determined. (Top officials able to predict the results of the given
choice lay out to the employees)
Bureaucracy has it advantages and disadvantages. It’s best utilized when there is a desired
end

Advantages
 Efficient structure for handling large numbers of tasks requiring great deal of
paper work (Weber used Internal Revenue Services as an example in the article
which is the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore where it handles all tax-
related issues for the public. It process the application of our tax form and
answers questions subjected to the property, corporate, individuals and GST)

Disadvantages
 Nearly automatic function may be seen as an effort to replace human judgment
with rules, regulations & structure. Workers must do those task assigned, and not
others – rigid.
 Dehumanizing – self was placed in confinement, emotional controlled (people
cannot behave as human beings), might lead to sabotage of operation.
 Red Tape
 Emphasis on quantification little or no concern is given on the actual quality of
work often leads to large amounts of poor-quality work
Seminar 2 – People Management & Change - Done by: Sheena & Xiaolian

Why Weber feared about the emerging of iron cage rationality?

Weber anticipated a society which people would be locked into a series of rational
structures and that is to move from one rational system to another. The rational system
that he referred to here is the rationalized institute like schools, workplace
(manufacturing industry, automobile industry that had been mentioned earlier) and lastly
recreational settings and homes. Recreation is thought as an effort to escape the
rationalization of our daily lives yet as the tour agency introducing of package tour to
places like China, Australia, Taiwan and many others rationalized the process. People
toured the places of interest in a rigidly controlled manner; in fact the package is
conducted in a rigidly controlled manner. Local campgrounds like the chalets in East
Coast, Pasir Ris and Changi where one can remain within the room and ‘enjoy’ the
rationalized forms of recreation available at home like the television.
The fast food restaurant is part of a bureaucratic system, it employed the rational
principles pioneered by the bureaucracy and others have been combined with them to
help create the process of McDonaldization. The ‘others’ as mentioned refers to
Taylorism and Fordism (assembly line)

Scientific Management also known as Taylorism was created by Frederick W.

Taylor. He developed a series of principles designed to rationalize work as he was
stunned by the lack of efficiency in the work world. He studied the time and motion
studies of workers that are reasonably efficient to discover the best way to do a job. Once
he discovered the best way, he will select workers and taught them to perform the work in
the way he prescribed.
It is a nonhuman technology that exerted great control over workers. Under Taylor’s
methods, workers are found to be more efficient; their work exhibited predictability and
produced more products when pay had only been slightly increased. This has a much
bigger impact for the organization as a whole as the company gains more profits.
Humans are treated like animals or mechanical robots and were required to do one or few
things with the results that most of their skills and abilities were not used. This influenced
the Japanese and where the Japanese has fully improvise it to their working environment
and develop it more fully.

The assembly line was an efficient system for manufacturing and automobile that
was introduced by Henry Ford in the bureaucratized automobile system. Each worker on
the line does is highly predictable and all end products are identical. It maximize the
production of cars and the control over workers as the workers must do the required tasks
assign to them in order for the next worker to perform another task that adds on to it.
There is limited time allocated for each job and little or no room for innovation ways of
doing a specific task. To quote an example is the chef working behind the conveyor belt
of a sushi restaurant. He/she is required to prepare a dish/sushi and place it on the
conveyor belt. He has little room for innovative ways to do the task as there is
circumcised menu of what has to be placed on the conveyor belt.
Assembly lines are nonhuman technologies that allow fewer, less-skilled people to
produce cars and the specialization of each task allows the replacement of human with
robots. People do not express themselves in work but rather deny themselves. A worker
Seminar 2 – People Management & Change - Done by: Sheena & Xiaolian

will not identify themselves and associate themselves with what they do in the workplace
and high chance of the workers leave the job when pay is not attractive.
However the assembly line has greatly influenced the fast food restaurant in using of
conveyor belt like the Burger King to cook its hamburgers and the task performed in
assembly-like fashion.
This has also lead to the expansion of tourist industry like Shangri-la hotels that operates
in Australia, China, Canada, Hong Kong, India, UK, USA and many more.
Swensen’s restaurant that operates in China, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Levittown built in suburban area has a highly rationalized and mass-produced houses
pioneered by the Levitt & Sons. The creation of Levittown helped boast the need for and
access to automobile as people need to travel from home to city is for work and also to
the shopping malls. The house was stationary throughout the construction and it was the
workers that moved around the building site. The workers performed specialized tasks for
example all wall siding were of specific measurement and same man do same thing every
day. However the earning that they received seems to make up for the boredom at work.
Work of the construction laborer is similar to the automobile worker and with same
attitude and rationality.
The consumers get the most house in term of the space for the least money.

Malling of America
There are over37,000 malls in America. Shopping malls exhibit all of the basic
characteristics of McDonaldization. A recent example will be the Vivo city. Just how
many of the tenants there are chain stores. We have Giordano, ZARA, GAP, Mango,
Tangs, Charles n Keith, The Banquet food court, Breadtalk and etc.
The mall provides a profitable venue for these tenants, at the same time; most malls
would have much unrented space if it weren’t for these tenants. We can say that they both
compliment one another well. The malls also provide a predictable, uniform and
profitable venue for such chains.

Fast-food Factory based the restaurant on the quantifiable principles of speed,

volume and low price. Customers are offered limited menu and personalized services are
eliminated. These allows for job fragmentation and specialization where preparation of
food are broken down into simple, repetitive tasks. Job scope and roles of each worker
are clearly defined. Rules and regulations control and define how the worker should act
and speak while performing task. Even the way of food preparation were so set in details,
e.g. precise cooking times, exactly how to grill hamburger etc
Ray Kroc, one who built McDonald’s empire of franchising came up with principles of
rationalization, where uniformity came into place. Each store is to share a standard menu,
one size portion of servings, same prices and quality, thus ability to differentiate
themselves well from competitors. Inspectors were also out to each store to check on
uniformity and conformity in order to met standards set. What has set McDonald’s
different with the rest of the fast food restaurants that had already started off with
franchising (e.g.; Burger King’s and KFC) are that Ray Kroc turn this fast food business
into a national and international business, he exerted great control in permit franchise one
at a time, set bottom rock initial fee but with 1.9 percent of the store sales demanded from
Seminar 2 – People Management & Change - Done by: Sheena & Xiaolian

the franchisees , franchisees were encourage to come up with innovation to enhance

operation and system which explain the come about of new creation like the Egg
McMuffin, the fish sandwich and etc.

Conclusion
McDonald’s & process of McDonalization did not occur in a historical vacuum
Contribution of structural bases needed for fast-food chain to thrive such as providing
transport service to and from workplace for workers living far away.
McDonalization is a logical extension of the idea of rationalization and a label to describe
the most contemporary aspects of this process.