McDonaldization and Work-Jim Case Analysis
McDocs Scenario
Jim has been a physician at Smallville General Hospital since 1999. Becoming a doctor was Jim’s dream job; he has always wanted to help others. But lately, Jim likes practicing medicine less and less. His small practice has been taken over by Metropolis HMO Corporation, a giant company that has been buying medical practices all across the country. Since then there have been many changes. Jim used to order any medicine or lab test he wanted but now is limited by cost. In fact, he must follow a standardized list of tests and treatments for various illnesses. Each diagnosis has a code number. Every doctor’s office in the Metropolis HMO group must choose from this list. Nor is Jim able to decide how long to spend with each patient. The manager, who is not a doctor, tells him to limit his time to 15 minutes per patient. At the end of every month, Jim receives a statistics sheet with numbers of patients seen, diagnoses, and the average cost per patient. If Jim’s costs are too high, the HMO’s manager reminds him that this is against policy. Even the décor of Jim’s office has been changed to match the other Metropolis offices. All are decorated in red, black, and white with the Metropolis HMO logo. Moreover, all staff must answer the phone the same way: “Thank you so much for choosing Metropolis HMO. We really care about your needs. How can we help?” To top it off, Jim’s patients don’t seem to respect his judgment any longer. Just yesterday, a patient challenged his advice, saying that she looked up her diagnosis on the Internet. Now, instead of enjoying medicine, Jim is thinking about retirement!
McDonaldization and Work-Jim Case Analysis
Assignment:
McDonaldization and Work (Chapter 7)
- Research various types of jobs using ONET https://www.onetonline.org/find/
- Choose two or three very different
- Think about the elements of McDonaldization. Compare and contrast the amount of McDonaldization in each job.
- Write a 1 ½-2 page summary of the jobs, the amount of McDonaldization in each job, and explain how each job is or is not subject to McDonaldization.
- Draw conclusions based on your results. How did the jobs differ? How were they alike? How did the jobs differ from the standard McDonaldized model? Did you find anything unexpected? What do your findings suggest about the McDonaldization of work?
Fast Food Workers and Retail Workers
Fast Food Workers
In the modern society, consumers want the fastest and high quality products for the exchange of their money (Ritzer, 2012). This trend has contributed to the McDonaldization process and as a result led to the emergence of inequalities in the workplace. The entry of the McDonaldization ideology in the fast food industry has influenced many restaurants not only in the American society but also globally through adoption franchising strategy with control and efficiency being justifiable reasons for its applicability. This is a Student Sample ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
Fast food workers condition can be attributed to the McDonaldization process whereby workers are allocated tasks based on the job ranks. For example, fast food workers are classified based on the job ranks such as franchise owner, chief crew, shift manager and worker. Besides these inequalities in the workplace, the McDonaldization attributes have been manifested through impersonal and impartial policies and rules that are being enforced by the restaurants (Forman, 2015). These approaches facilitate the creation of powerless workers who are made to go by the orders from the management. Findings indicate that this is a modern form of capitalism that alienates workers from product creation process as well as from the final product. As results, the fast food workers end up being denied their essential needs such as identity and creativity. This turns out their work to pure impersonal and therefore, they do not experience job satisfaction from work but just work to complete their tasks.
Retail Workers
Just like fast food workers, the retails workers are also the victims of McDonaldization concept (Ritzer, 2012). ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW