McDonaldization

McDonaldization is defined as the spread of the basic principles of the fast-food restaurant throughout society and the world. The principles are (1) efficiency, (2) predictability, (3) calculability of quantity versus quality, (4) control, largely through the replacement of human technology by nonhuman technology (machines, automation). In many ways the fifth, albeit unintended, principle is the most important from both an empirical and an analytical perspective: (5) the irrationalities of rationality. The irrationalities include the antitheses of principles one through four (e.g., inefficiency), homogenization, dehumanization (of workers and customers), adverse health effects, adverse effects on the environment, disenchantment, and so on.

These principles did not come into existence with the birth of McDonald's (the pioneer and most important of the fast-food chains) but predated it by decades (e.g., Henry Ford's assembly line and F. W. Taylor's principles of scientific management), if not by a century or more (the bureaucracy, especially the German bureaucracy analyzed by Max Weber). However, all of its predecessors were focused on production. McDonaldization was (and is) concerned with production (e.g., of the employees who work the griddle or at the counter), but in many ways, its most important innovation was to extend these principles to the consumer and consumption. In Ford's assembly line or Weber's bureaucracy, it was the workers who were affected, even controlled, by these basic principles. However, in Ray Kroc's (the founder of the McDonald's chain; the inventors were the McDonald brothers) McDonald's, and now in all fast-food restaurants, it is both the employees and the consumers who are similarly affected and controlled. Control over customers must, of course, be subtler than control over employees, but it is control nonetheless.

[Page 924]Theoretically, the idea of McDonaldization can be traced to Max Weber's work on bureaucracy, which, of course, is embedded in his larger theory of rationalization. Weber saw rationalization as a process created in the Occident, which was affecting an increasing number of sectors of society and proliferating globally (even though it had to overcome significant barriers in many parts of the world). To Weber, the bureaucracy was the paradigm of that process and increasing bureaucratization accompanied the spread of rationalization. In the context of Weber's theory, McDonaldization is a modern version of rationalization in which the fast-food restaurant supplants the bureaucracy as the paradigm of the process. Like rationalization, McDonaldization is spreading across many sectors of society. Also like rationalization, McDonaldization was created in the West (the United States) and is spreading throughout the world (there are many global chains of fast-food restaurants—McDonald's alone has over thirty thousand restaurants, the majority of which are outside the United States—to say nothing of indigenous clones throughout the world). And both processes can be seen as having a series of unforeseen consequences, most importantly the irrationality of rationality.