Formal Organizations: Why does Ferrante focus on McDonalds

1

• Formal Organizations Why does Ferrante focus on
  McDonalds?
• Webers Ideal Type of Bureaucracy
• Rationalization and the Concept of
  McDonaldization Unintended consequences of
  value-rational thought and action
• Multinational and Global Corporations

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Why the focus on McDonalds?

• the dominant organizational paradigm?
• are there other possible contenders?

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• Max Webers Ideal Type of Bureaucracy
• what is an ideal type?
• Characteristics of bureaucracy (p. 146)
• Two research modifications
• the importance of the informal dimension of
  bureaucracy
• glocalization

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• Rationalization
• value-rational thought and action (pp. 147-8)
• efficiency as the prime value
• Weber the disenchantment of the world
• McDonaldization
• unintended consequences
• externality costs
• Case study factory farming(The Meatrix)

5

• The McDonaldization of Society
• Four central principles efficiency,
  quantification and calculation predictability
  control.
• Can you give examples from other formal
  organizations besides the fast food industry?
• George Ritzer the irrationality of rationality
• Max Weber modern society as an iron cage

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• The Extremes of Value-Rational Action
• Trained incapacity (Zuboff on automating and
  informating work environments)
• Problematic measures of performance
• The (two-fold) problem of oligarchy
• Alienation

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• Multinational and Global Corporations
• the debate over their benefits and drawbacks
• the issue of evaluative criteriae.g. in the
  case of McDonalds
• the issue of privatization

Cochabamba case study
8
A note on the current financial
crisis Privatization and deregulation vs. A
greater role of national and global
governance AIG ads cafeteria nightmare
9
Has Wal Mart become the new dominant
organizational paradigm? Frontline Film Is
Wal-Mart good for America?