Some
Notes to Accompany Chapter 2 of Ritzer (McDonaldization)
I. Purpose
of Chapter:
A. Ritzer
wants to address the precursors to McDonaldization, acknowledging that the
phenomenon did not "occur in a vacuum."
1. Theories
of Max Weber
2. F.
W. Taylor's Scientific Management
3. Henry
Ford's Assembly Line Levittown
4. The
Shopping Mall
5. The
"original" McDonalds
B. What
are some other examples of early bureaucracies? Is Ritzer leaving out anything important here?
1. Not
really, there are many examples of early bureaucracies-- Weber wrote
extensively on bureaucracy in ancient society. The governments of Rome and China; the early Catholic church are
prime examples. However, these cases do
not represent fully bureaucratized societies. Weber, at the end of the last century,
believed that the world was at the dawn of becoming entirely bureaucratized.
II. Weber:
A. Some
points on Weber's life (Bendix, 1962)
1. Born
in 1864, his father was a wealthy lawyer; his mother a woman of culture with
deep religious and humanitarian interests--(interests not held by his father).
2. At
the age of 4, he suffered an attack of meningitis. This debilitating illness,
plus his keen intellect and a stimulating family environment, made him
withdraw from his peers and started him on a road to scholarship. (Except for
college, he lived with his parents until the age of 29-- when he married).
3. He
began his studies as a law student at the University of Heidelberg in 1882,
spent a year training in the army in 1883 and participated in military
exercises as a reservist in 1885, 1887, and 1888. He took his examination in
law in 1886
4. He
completed a doctoral dissertation in Law in 1889--(A Contribution to the
History of Medieval Business Organizations). In preparing to teach Roman,
German, and Commercial law at the University of Berlin, he completed his
second work, Roman Agrarian History and its significance for Public and
Private Law, in 1891. A year later
he published a 900-page work on rural labor in Germany. Just two years later
(1894) he became full professor of economics at Freiburg University. In 1896, he accepted a position at the
University of Heidelberg.
5. At
the age of 33, in 1897 he suffered a nervous breakdown and stopped his academic
work. It took him four years to
recover. The only thing that seemed to
help was extensive travel. His scholarly
work resumed in 1891. There were offers of a renewed professorship at
Heidelberg, but he turned them down.
6. In
1904 he visited the United States to participate in the "Congress of Arts
and Sciences." Heidelberg renewed
its offer, but he didn't feel that he could resume the rigors of academic life.
However, he came into a wealthy inheritance which allowed him to live
independently as a scholar. And he did
up to WWI when he took a break from his own work to become the director army
hospitals in Heidelberg.
7. He
died of pneumonia in 1920 at the age of 56.
B. Major
works (too numerous for a complete listing here; some major titles):
1. Economy
and Society
2. The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
3. The
Theory of Social and Economic Organization
4. The
Religion of China
5. The
Religion of India
6. Ancient
Judaism
7. General
Economic History
8. The
City
9. Rational
and Social Foundations of Music
C. There
are also many volumes that have been compiled from his hundreds of essays.
III. The
Iron Cage
A. What
is the "iron cage" of bureaucracy that Weber speaks of? Its the increased control over human life
that rationality brings to society.
1. "Weber
... identifies bureaucracy with rationality, and the process of
rationalization with mechanism, depersonalization, and oppressive
routine. Rationality, in this context,
is seen as adverse to personal freedom... He deplores the type of man that the
mechanization and the routine of bureaucracy selects and forms. The narrowed
professional, publicly certified and examined, and ready for tenure and
career. This type of man Weber deplored
as a petty routine creature, lacking in heroism, human spontaneity, and
inventiveness..." (Mills and Gerth, 50).
2. Weber
described four attributes of modern bureaucracy:
a. It
is more efficient than alternative systems of administration and efficiency
increases to the point where bureaucratic systems of administration
"depersonalize" the execution of official tasks. (Bendix, 426).
b. Bureaucracy concentrates the means of administration. "As the size of an organization increases, the resources needed to run it are taken out of the hands of autonomous individuals and groups and placed under the control of a ruling minority." (Bendix, 428). This happens in all aspects of life-- even at the university where private scholars are "expropriated" from their work as universities built up their own laboratories and libraries upon which scholars have come to depend upon-- Modern health care is another example. The private physician has come to be controlled by hospital-based medicine, HMOs and the like.
c. Modern
bureaucracy levels social and economic differences-- it does this by replacing
a nepotistic, plutocratic system with a paid, professional, administration that
is based on merit. "Authority is
exercised in accordance with rules, and everyone subject to that authority is
legally equal." (Bendix, 429)
d. "...[A]
fully developed bureaucracy implements a system of authority that is practically
indestructible." (Bendix, 430).
The modern world depends on a smoothly functioning bureaucracy with its
experts, specialized divisions, etc., to survive on a day-to-day basis. Once it
is in place, it is difficult to remove.
3. The
Iron Cage: "Weber anticipated a society in which people would be locked
into a series of rational structures, and their only mobility would be to move
from one rational system to another... There would, in effect, be no escape
from rationality; society would become nothing more than a seamless web of
rationalized structures." (p. 23).
IV. Ritzer's
metaphor: McDonaldization
A. To
Ritzer, "McDonaldization" represents an "Ideal Type" of
bureaucratization and rationalization. "The fast food restaurant has
become the model of rationality." (p. 19).
1. Formal
rationality: "distinctive to the modern west"; "...the search by
people for the optimum means to a given end is shaped by rules, regulations,
and larger social structures. Thus, individuals are not left to their own
devices in searching for the best
means of attaining a given objective...In effect, people no longer had to
discover for themselves the optimum means to an end; rather, optimum means had
already been discovered and were institutionalized in rules, regulations, and
structures." (p. 19).
B. Weber
praised bureaucracy and formal rationality for its advantages of speed and
efficiency-- he criticized it as being dehumanizing, and the irrationalities
that they created.
1. Irrationality
of rationality:
a. “The
fast food restaurant is a dehumanizing place in which to work and by which to
be serviced...these rationalized settings are places in which `the self was
placed in confinement, its emotions controlled, and its spirit subdued.”
b. Bureaucracies
also degenerate into inefficiency and "red tape."
c. Bureaucracies
can become unpredictable because situations emerge where employees don't know
how to respond or what to do.
d. Frustrated
and angry people try to subvert the process.
V. Four elements of formal rationality: (These are important because they are used to organize the book into chapters.
A. Efficiency:
Bureaucracy is the best way to coordinate the distribution of vast numbers of
resources over great distances to large numbers of people. Ritzer's example of the IRS is one good
example; the military is another.
B. Predictability:
Bureaucracies remove uncertainty by "well-entrenched rules and regulations"
that try to cover as many contingencies as possible.
C. Calculability:
Bureaucracies organize tasks into easily calculated bits and pieces that can be
measured and quantified. Therefore it
is easy to measure work output.
D. Control:
Bureaucracies exert a lot of control over people (and the social
environment). To do this, they employ
non-human technology; rules and regulations defining behavior in each office;
restricting the type of goods and services (options) available;
VI. The seamless web of rationalization:
A. Ritzer
points to recreation as an example:
1. Vacationing:
the "package tour"
2. Rationalized
campgrounds
VII. Brief
history of rationalization:
A. Scientific
Management: (F.W, Taylor)
1. Time-and-motion
studies-- Pig iron example.
2. Separated
management from workers-- (workers regarded as too dumb to understand the
principles of scientific management)
3. Humans
treated like cogs in the machine-- dehumanizing.
B. The
assembly line (another form of scientific management):
1. Highly
efficient, predictable, measurable, controlled
C. Levittowns (made possible by the mass-produced automobile and rationally designed super highway system):
1. Rationalization
of home building; (a stationary assembly line where workers moved around the
products); Levittowns, themselves became rationalized places to live because
of the nature of the physical environment.
D. Shopping
Centers: "The Malling of America"
1. (There
are 37,000 malls in the U.S. today-- an average of 740 per state)
2. What
is interesting are the chains of stores that populate these malls and the
symbiotic relationship between the two.
3. Again,
the automobile and highway system are major factors in the "malling of
America."
E. The
McDonald Brothers (1937, Pasadena, CA) -- applying the assembly line to the
restaurant to create the first "fast food factory." (p. 30).
1. By
the time Ray Kroc got involved, the basics were already there-- the fast food
factory technique (McDonald brothers, 1937)
and franchising (Singer, auto manufacturers, soft drink makers, Dairy
Queen, etc. from 1865 onward).
a. McDonald's
first franchise opened on April 15, 1955-- after Big Boy; InstaBurger (Burger
King); KFC.
b. Ritzer
points out that McDonaldization is "...the culmination of a series of
rationalization processes that had been occurring throughout the twentieth
century." (p. 32). Kroc did make
important changes that set the stage for wide-scale fast food restaurants.
(1) National
(and now, international control) McDonald's was a national franchise--
regional franchises not permitted.
(2) Low
franchising fees-- (McDonald's source of revenue was a 1.9 percent share of
store sales).
(3) Franchises
were encouraged to come up with innovations-- enabling some creativity to occur.
(4) Kroc's
insistence on uniformity and standardization (including an "operations
manual" for management and production within the franchise.