Question

short answer :

List two of the six traits that Max Weber used to describe bureaucratic social organizations and give an explanation of your two choices.

What is the "McDonaldization" of society? List two of the four principles that define this organizational pattern and briefly describe them.

What does it mean to say that rationality may be irrational? How might Weber respond to this question?

Answer 1

For Max Weber the bureaucratic organizational is characterized by these six features: Specialization and Division of Labor; Hierarchical Authority Structures; Rules and Regulations; Technical Competence Guidelines; Impersonality and Personal Indifference; A Standard of Formal written communication.

Out of these two traits I chose to explain Specialization and Division of Labor and Hierarchical Authority Structures.

Specialization and Division of Labor; Task in a bureaucratic organization is assigned according to the specialized skills of the employees and the most efficient method of accomplishing goals. A job descriptions are clear and guide employees in their day to day functioning.

Hierarchical Authority Structures; In a bureaucratic structure power is vested in position and not concentrated in the hands of one person. Authority is based at different succession levels. Starting from the most menial worker in the organization to the highest executive. Each level has clearly defined roles, responsibilities and authority. This is necessary to maintain order and maximize efficiency.

The concept McDonaldization is given by the American sociologist George Ritzer in his book The McDonaldization of Society (1993). He defines 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.' Ritzer observes four primary components of McDonaldization: efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control.

For Ritzer efficiency stands for the optimal method for accomplishing a task. When you enter the McDonald's as a customer waiting for your order. According to the Mcdonalds model, this waiting time should be minimal so that the customer is happy as well as the restaurant is able to get more customers and maximize profit and hence efficient.

Predictability means that every time and wherever in the customer goes to the McDonaldized organization he /she will receive the same service and receive the same product. The same applies to the workers in those organizations. Their tasks are highly repetitive, highly routine, and predictable.

In an effort to be more rational, contemporary societies are becoming more and more uniform, impersonal and dehumanizing. Ritzer employed the McDonald as a metaphor to explain that how rationality has become irrational. The popularity of the restaurant itself is a perfect example of rationalization because traditional, home-cooked family meals have been replaced with meals of practicality and convenience but at the same time has to lead to irrationality when we have to stand in line for a long time and the taste of the food is also not that good. These organizations as a setting are dehumanizing. The people working here cannot always behave as human beings.

Weber understood and predicted that rationalization would continue to occur in modern societies until it would become an iron cage (irrational) that in turn would dehumanize people and create an extreme level of uniformity.