MANAGEMENT AT MCDONALDS

Management at McDonalds



Management at McDonalds

Introduction

The McDonald's Corporation is the largest restaurant chain fast food restaurants in the world, and is originally American. The company manages its subsidiaries directly or through franchising. It is based in Oak Brook, a suburb of Chicago, in the state of Illinois. The McDonald's restaurants are spread around the world (to employ full-time about 438,000 people) and have become one of the most recognisable symbols and claims of the so-called globalisation, and the hectic lifestyle of consumerism modern.

Some observers have suggested that the company would have encouraged the growth of quality services in all the markets it enters. A group of anthropologists in a study entitled "Golden Arches East", studied the impact it has on McDonald's' East Asia and in particular Hong Kong. When the chain opened in 1975, McDonald's was the first restaurant to offer clean eateries bringing customers to demand the same from other restaurants or from other institutions (McDonald's Corporation 2009, 34).

In addition to its effect on business standards, McDonald's was also a crowbar to force changing habits of customers. Popularising the idea of fast food restaurant, McDonald's has led to easing or elimination of various taboos such as eating while walking, a practice common in Japan. McDonald's has also levelled the social strata during dinners: there are no problems for some clients who might be embarrassed if someone else ordered the food more expensive in a restaurant, the difference in price of food from McDonald's is in fact minimal, and not dependent on the major / minor parts of ingredients, so that it cannot categorise customers socially. The company adopts a classification of McDonald's as very original but also very easy for their employees. This model has been exported to every country where McDonald's has given rise to the branches, creating a lot of conflict with the various national laws. In Italy, for example, the division of roles is much criticised, as it is based on the principle of "self-employed handyman." While there are at least ten professionals, the difference between them is purely hierarchical, since virtually every level is trained to perform most of the tasks (Narapareddy 2009, 90).

A few days back, I went to McDonalds to see how they manage their work in busy hours. This paper will discuss my observation about the work management tactics of the organisation in a holistic way.

Management presence

There were two managers present at the time I was there at the outlet. One was the manager of customer services, and the other one was production manager. I think this was enough for an organisation to have two managers at an outlet in a time. The outlet I visited was having around 80 people at that time which was a huge crowd.

Style of management

The managers were very friendly. If they were called by any customer, they would treat them with a smile on their face and in a cooperative manner. They had the attitude of “customer is always ...