According to George Ritzer, bureaucracy completely dehumanized the social institutions in America. He sees the bureaucracy as having four components: efficiency, predictability, control and quantification. He terms this dehumanization of an institution as "McDonaldization". One of the most prevalent examples in modern society is the health care institution. In the past, health care was more simplistic in nature. House calls were not unheard of, and doctors knew all of their patients and their families on a personal level. The doctor who delivered your parents would deliver you as well as your future children. Follow-ups were quite normal; doctors were concerned with your progress for their own peace of mind. It is only recently that the …show more content…
Some pharmacies can have prescriptions delivered to your home, much like a machine would. Predictability is a big characteristic in the McDonalized healthcare system. A simple visit to the doctor now has become formulaic. First the receptionist fills out the necessary paperwork and informs the doctor you have arrived. Then you wait until a nurse comes into the waiting room and informs you that doctor will see you now. Most times this is not actually the case, in actuality it means that the nurse will now take your temperature, pulse rate, and blood pressure. Like a perfect automaton, the nurse proceeds to measure vital signs and note her findings with as little human interaction with you as is possible. After the nurse has completed her tasks, you must wait until the doctor pops his head in, nurse's records in hand. The doctor then proceeds to ask you some variation of the stock doctor question: "What seems to be the problem today?" You then inform the doctor of all your symptoms, which he processes and eventual comes up with a diagnosis, much like a computer would. The doctor then either gives you a prescription or advises you to "stay in bed and drink lots of fluids", another stock doctor phrase. If it is necessary according to the diagnosis made, the doctor may decide further tests to be necessary. If further treatment is required, you basically must go
The way that Burger King and other fast food restaurant chains do business and markets their products to consumers is due to the change in our society to where the consumer wants the biggest, fastest, and best product they can get for their money. This change in society can be attributed to a process known as McDonaldization. Although McDonaldization can be applied to many other parts of our society, this paper will focus on its impact on Burger King and Taco Bell restaurants. My belief is that the process of McDonaldization has lead our generations toward a more a much more efficient lifestyle, with much less quality. From my observations and studies of these fast food resturants, several themes have become
On McDonalds For my business course, I have been asked to prepare a report for a business at work. I could choose any business to investigate. I decided to do McDonalds because it is globally recognised and of its size. Also because it is a franchise I thought that it would be interesting to see how a franchise operated.
McDonalds is one of the biggest fast food companies in the market share today. It has been running in over 119 countries, as well as they have acquired over 31,000 restaurants in the world now. McDonald’s brand mission is to be customers’ favourite place and way to eat, they are aligned around a global strategy called the ‘Plan to Win’, they also committed to continuously improving their operations and enhancing their customers’ experience. As we all know that McDonald’s had successfully achieved their goal through out the years. (aboutmcdonald’s, 2012) Apart from this, as McDonald’s is a worldwide company, they also had the social responsibility to return the community; therefore, the ‘Ronald McDonald House Charities’ was
Max Weber used the bureaucracy to represent how the society changes over time whereas Ritzer sees fast food restaurants as a better way to describe how societies change and become more of a contemporary thought pattern. Ritzer understands McDonaldization as a process in which it is slowly taking over the world, he says it can be summarised by just one small quote “the principle of fast food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of the American society as well as the rest of the world” (Ritzer 2008). He states that the past, present and future of McDonalization has appeared from the iron cage to fast food restaurants which shows that rationalisation is still developing, the iron cage is a way to describe it in the past and McDonaldization helps to describe it in today’s society, rationalisation will continue to progress until other contemporary sociologist find different ways to define it. Although McDonaldization offers many advantages as it gives customers quick food at low prices it also has disadvantages just like the bureaucracy they both suffer from irrationality, like fast food restaurants a bureaucracy can be a ‘dehumanising’ place to work and be served by. Many things are developed by technical devises rather than the human hand (Wynyard 1998)
The next interviewee is a female who is forty-one years of age. Let us begin with her most pleasant and positive healthcare experience, which was with a Breast Oncologist, Dr. Howard Burstein at Dana Farber. The staff at Dana Farber goes over and beyond to make every one of their patients feel comfortable. The staff welcomes the patients in a cordial way and helps them with any given question or concern. The registration (front desk) provided her with a badge to wear after checking in for her appointment. This badge can locate your whereabouts for the staff. This is to a great degree accommodating and the staff informs the patient if the doctor they are seeing is running behind, this allows the patient to get a bite to eat at the cafeteria or even just walk around. She valued the convenience in which the bands and medical
The beginning of the day in the ambulatory setting starts with a Medical Assistant performing quality assurance tests on the Glucometers and INR machines. Once each device indicates PASS, placed on the docking station, so the results are transferred electronically to the central lab. The MA’s immediately start rooming patients, obtain vital signs with a Dynamap machine that is in Sync with the Electronic Medical Record giving the Physicians the capability to see the vitals before entering the room.
Its three main characteristics are that it has a division of labour, hierarchy of authority, and an impartial and impersonal application of rules and policies (www.faculty.rsu.edu/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm). Thus, from that definition of a bureaucracy, one would conclude that McDonald's is a bureaucracy. The fact that it is bureaucracy is supported by the fact that each assigns workers to a specific job where each worker individually contributes to the overall success of the restaurant by doing his or her job. For example, McDonalds workers are assigned to work at the grill, register, or drive-through window. The restaurant also has ranks while on the job such as worker, shift manager, crew chief, and franchise owner. These ranks demonstrate the hierarchy of authority. Furthermore, the restaurant enforces the impartial and impersonal application of rules and policies.
Not only patients, doctors estimate the time of surgery takes, predict times of body check. Patients know how the process runs but they seldom think how to against. It is easily to see that everything is standardized and homogenized. Each hospital having the same service and process.
George Ritzer, in his book The McDonaldization of Society, has given a good understanding of the kind of world we live in. He describes the concept of McDonaldization, which is the process in which the principles that form the basis of McDonalds are greatly influencing the rest of society. McDonalds runs its business on the following key elements: efficiency, calculability, predictability and control by non-human technologies. A fifth element, which Ritzer perceives as a disadvantage of McDonaldization, is the irrationality of rationality. This is the idea that a society which is based entirely on rationality is not a normal human society because humans are not
Health care is something that affects every person in this country, and the rising cost is making it nearly impossible for people to afford. In The McDonaldization of Society, George Ritzer shows how the health care industry is changing and how the phenomenon of McDonaldization is effecting how we receive health care. Healthcare has become more efficient, calculable, predictable, and controlling. In the following sections, I will explore further these aspects of McDonaldization and how they relate to the health care industry.
McDonaldization is becoming the new wave of job types where workers are being deskilled, dehumanized and exploited. Machines are taking over tasks which the employees used to do such as bank machines (interact). The McDonaldized jobs now instead of making the employee do all the work they have the customer working too, for example when the customer cleans up after eating. These jobs are becoming less interactive and personal because workers are becoming dehumanized and only allowed to follow a script, there is also the fact that fast food Company’s use drive through, where limited interaction occurs and are many restrictions. These types of jobs which the author George Ritzer labeled
The procedure about McDonaldization takes an undertaking Also breaks it down under more modest assignments. This will be rehashed until every one errands bring been broken down of the littlest workable level. Those coming about assignments would after that rationalized on discover the solitary The majority productive system to finishing every undertaking. Know other strategies would that point esteemed wasteful Also disposed of.
“Small wonder our national spirit is husk empty. We have more information but less knowledge. More communication but less community. More goods but less goodwill. More of virtually everything save that which the human spirit requires. So distracted have we become sating this new need or that material appetite, we hardly noticed the departure of happiness”
George Ritzer describes McDonaldization as “the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world”. McDonaldization is the idea that our society is becoming more efficient and more fast paced. Rational systems can be defined as “unreasonable, dehumanizing systems that deny the humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within them or are served by them”.1 Today there are many types of businesses that are increasingly adapting the same values and principles of the fast-food industry to their needs. Rational systems are dehumanizing our society and seem to be even more irrational than convenient. “Almost every aspect of
McDonald's is the world’s leading food service retailer with more than 30,000 local restaurants in 121 countries serving 45 million customers each day.