Where does McDonaldization come from (its conceptual origins)?
Sociologist Max Weber, writing in the early part of this century, identified this process of rationalization. At the time, it wasn’t so apparent what a BIG, and possibly irreversible process, it was. Weber’s interest was in the organizational variant of rationalization–the bureaucratic organization. We often think of bureaucracies as ‘red tape,’ or ‘government,’ but the bureaucracy is a type of organization that dominates our lives. Some of its characteristics include hierarchical organization (think of EOU, we have a president, a provost, vice presidents of student affairs and finance, deans, etc., faculty, staff, and students). The food chain is pretty clear. Without hierarchical organization, we might not know who to communicate with on a certain problem, or who would be responsible for solving it. Part of this also involves specialization (look at a list of subspecialties just in the field of microbiology). There’s a lot of information out there for one person to master. Imagine t
