Blackwell Reference Online

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McDonaldization is the process by which principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more spheres of US society and the rest of the world. Coined by the sociologist George Ritzer, the term invokes the famous fast-food chain founded by Ray Kroc in 1955 as a metaphor for a widespread change in the delivery of goods and services toward more instrumentally efficient means of distribution. In a series of books and articles, Ritzer describes the competitive advantages of the McDonald's service system and catalogs the many ways in which it has shaped the expanding consumer marketplace. McDonaldization can be understood as a specific instance of the process of rationalization: the development of instrumentally efficient means to achieve a given end. Weber first described the process of rationalization in reference to the development of administrative bureaucracies in modern Europe. Bureaucracies attain a high degree of efficiency by being organized into functionally differentiated, hierarchical systems based on written rules. After World War II the same principles of efficiency began to be applied on a widespread basis to sectors outside the bureaucracy (and factory), most notably in the fast-food restaurant and other spaces of consumption. Streamlining meant that newly minted consumers had more access to a greater variety of goods than ever before. It also meant ... log in or subscribe to read full text