The mechanistic structure comprises a bureaucratic or hierarchical arrangement with formalised practices or procedures along with centralised authority and focuses on control and specialisation. Mechanistic structures are rigid and excessively authoritative with emphasis on power and chain of command. Conversely, organic structures are more flexible, open, and informal as compared to mechanistic structures and encourage employee involvement and input. Organic structures are more practical as compared to mechanistic structures in a rapidly changing business environment of the modern world mainly because of the flexibility. The mechanistic structures offset the creativity, flexibility, and autonomy required in the contemporary world to enhance innovation, motivation, and morale (Daft, 2013). However, mechanistic structures are not only attractive but continue to blossom in certain countries and some industries despite numerous flaws. Many governments and organisations prioritise authority, control, discipline, and allocation of responsibility to enhance efficiency and productivity at the cost of creativity and innovation. The primary cause for the popularity and prevalence of mechanistic structure is the focus on specialisation, emphasis on control, and the importance of authority or bureaucracy.
The mechanistic structure is popular and continues to blossom in many organisations due to an array of reasons despite the limitations and disadvantages. Many companies utilise the mechanistic structure due to a range of benefits, including authority, control, efficiency, and chain of command. The mechanistic structure involves numerous advantages and limitations that may affect the productivity, efficiency, creativity, and communication channels in the business. Some of the most noticeable benefits of the mechanistic structure include a focus on specialisation, discipline, control, minimisation of management costs, allocation of responsibility, and efficient decision-making. On the other hand, the primary disadvantages of the mechanistic organisational structure include excessive control, ineffective communication, and lack of creativity, rigidness, and a shortage of autonomy. The benefits of the mechanistic structure outweigh the limitations for many enterprises, especially in the context of large or multinational businesses. On the other hand, small companies or businesses utilise the mechanistic structure to retain authority and control over the decision-making and functioning of the entity.
The culture, values, beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes of the leaders of a country or business also influence the structure of the enterprise. Many countries have a collective culture and emphasise chain of command or authority as opposed to individualism and personal opinions. For example, the culture of Asian countries, including China, Japan, and India involve authoritarianism and autocratic style of leadership as opposed to egalitarianism. Although the public chooses or elects the political leadership in the countries, the leaders have superlative authority in almost all aspects of the government because of the culture. The national culture trickles down to large and small business corporations that follow the same authoritarian form of leadership or management. The national culture also influences the leadership style, especially in the context of the chain of command and efficiency. For example, the chain of command or authority in Asian countries has a considerably higher priority as compared to the Western cultures. The prioritisation or preference of power and chain of command leads to the development and continuation of a structure that supports or sustains the hierarchical levels.
The organisational culture and views of the management regarding control and authority play a vital role in the persistence and prevalence of the mechanistic structure. The leadership style has a significant influence on the organisational structure, especially in the context of centralised or decentralised authority. Many leaders or managers have an autocratic and authoritative leadership style that leads to the development of a mechanistic structure. On the other hand, many leaders believe that they should retain an ample amount of control or authority rather than delegate power to their subordinates (Dust, Resick, & Mawritz, 2014). The sense of control or power, especially in Eastern cultures, significantly influences the adoption of the mechanistic or organic structure. Conversely, the mechanistic structure is not only beneficial but also necessary in several contexts due to the size or complexity of the business or operations. For example, the mechanistic structure is the most efficient structure for large or complex multinational organisations with an array of divisions, departments, product lines, and services.
McDonaldization refers to the manifestation or prevalence and popularisation of the strategies of the McDonalds fast food chain in the society. George Ritzer coined and popularised the term McDonaldization in his 1993 book the McDonaldization of Society to explain the impact and influence of McDonalds on the American society. Although Ritzer utilised the expression to analyse the effects of McDonalds’ strategy on the American culture, the phenomenon considerably affected several countries and organisations throughout the world. McDonalds developed and implemented several strategies to manage and enhance the competitiveness of the fast food chain in a fiercely competitive business environment. Their strategies are prevalent in other industries too mainly because of the successful implementation of these strategies. Organisations consider the fact that through these strategies organisations can attain proactive returns and viability through proactive implementation.
The four primary elements of McDonaldization include efficiency, calculability, control, and predictability. McDonalds promoted efficiency by optimising all tasks in the fast food business and reducing the time spent on individual tasks or functions (Scott, 2014). Standardisation involved the uniformity and consistency of all products regardless of the environmental factors. This efficiency creates a long-term advantage for this organization as efficiency also enhances their customer base by keeping the customers intact with the organisation.
Calculability entails the quantification of services or products and emphasis on quality as opposed to the quantity to provide value for money to consumers. The control comprises the management and organisation of all employees and functions in a uniform and standardised manner. Calculability also maintains the quality of product in different scenarios as different restaurants opts for this strategy just to maintain their taste and attain beneficial returns. This would focus on portion size and cost of the product. Similarly, delivery based organisations also focus on the time it reaches the customer (Ritzer, 1996). These characteristics and some of the other scenarios combine to form the calculability scenario of an organisation.
Many businesses enterprises adapted the philosophy of McDonalds to enhance competitiveness, efficiency, and standardisation of business functions. However, McDonaldization involves several implications on the behaviour of employees mainly because of the emphasis on standardisation and effectiveness. The concept of efficacy under the McDonaldization philosophy focuses the reduction of time spent on business activities. However, emphasising time cutbacks can adversely affect the performance of the employees along with the quality of products. The philosophy will entail the reduction of time in all aspects of business functions without considering the psychological and physiological effects on employees. On the other hand, the calculability aspect of McDonaldization can also result in the degradation of quality due to the overemphasis on quantity as opposed to quality. Although the volume may compensate quality in the fast food business, it may be unfavourable for several industries that produce high-quality products. The employees will attempt to produce more goods or provide more services in the least amount of time to achieve targets without considering the quality. For example, customer support representatives in the service industry may attempt to assist a large number of clients rather than seeking quality of service for long-term customer loyalty.
The dimension of control is an important scenario for different organisations too. Different technology based organisations focus on this perspective because they want to maintain their quality through such perspectives. The tendency of control is an important perspective for McDonald because this would allow them maintains excellence in their products. Through this scenario, they also maintain the uniformity of their products as this would eliminate the hassles of having negative scenarios within the organisation. However, McDonalds believes that they should have appropriate case when it comes to replacing humans with other technology oriented scenarios. McDonalds should focus on the fact that they should only control the employees, but try viable ways to control the customers too. This would include scenarios like restriction of menus to number of items, utilization of customers to carry their food towards the table and certain other related measures.
Finally, predictability depicts the fact that how customers perceive McDonalds and how they directly aim their perception towards this organisation. Customers should predict that McDonalds should be same in different parts of the world so that customers can experience the same great taste everywhere in the world. Customers also should expect the same procedures of this organisation everywhere and this would include the employee’s tendency towards innovation.
Technology play an important role in the current era as different organisations embrace the perspectives to technology to attain viable returns. In the current era of globalisation, different employees prefer technological change mainly to simplify their work processes. Management of such organisations also consider this factor as an important scenario because this would enhance their performance. Organisations most of the times attain competitive advantage through an appropriate implementation of technology. However, these organisations make sure that this implementation would provide them beneficial returns, but initially might increase the cost structure of the organisation (Graeber, 2016). Most of the organisations having different organisational structures implement technology and different factors of technology because they consider the fact that they cannot sustain in the current era without appropriate technological implementation.
Bureaucracy and technology play an important role in different organisation because in certain bureaucratic organisations people still have to adjust themselves with respect to different technological changes. A bureaucratic organisation enjoys technical excellence over other organisations mainly because an ideal organisation of bureaucratic nature focuses on speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files and other technical aspects. In a bureaucratic organisation, the office maintains a strict hierarchy and focuses on centralization. This depicts that the decision-making authority in such organisations concentrates within the core authority of the organisation. In different organisational settings, technology works as an agent of change that leads towards the overall changes within the organisation. Technology in the modern era plays an important role creating the organisational structures within these organisations (Goodsell, 2014). In different manufacturing systems organisations create process management simpler and perfect with respect to unit based, mass based and continuous based process systems. However, at times technology can conflict with the perspective of bureaucracy because of the strict organisational policies and centralized nature of organisations. The decision makers believe that too much reliance on technology might result in the ineffectiveness of process implementation.
Majority of researchers still believe that information technology and bureaucracy do not share any conflicting views because of the fact that they share same values. Technological changes are inevitable and several public organisations implement these scenarios. A centralized structure and maintaining autonomy of command is important in a bureaucratic environment and technology can play an effective role in this perspective.
Organisations can adapt to new technologies by training and developing the mindset of their employees about the benefits associated with new technologies. Organisations should evaluate every perspective of new technologies and then they should decide that whether they should implement them or opt for alternative method. Training and developing the mindset of employees can play an effective role as they can learn new technological traits and improve the organisational performance through such perspective.
Conclusively, mechanism structure possesses certain advantages towards the management of different organisations in poor working scenarios. Organisations should evaluate a proper structure like Mcdonaldization to attain proactive returns in implementation perspective. Finally, organisations should embrace technological factors and they should understand the importance of technology to attain successful returns. Ineffective organisations do not focus on these perspectives and suffer in the longer-run.
References
Daft, R. L. (2013). Management. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Dust, S. B., Resick, C. J., & Mawritz, M. B. (2014). Transformational Leadership, Psychological Empowerment, and the Moderating Role of Mechanistic-Organic Contexts. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 35 (3), 413-433.
Goodsell, C. (2014). The New Case for Bureaucracy. New York: CQ Press.
Graeber, D. (2016). The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. London: Melville House.
Ritzer, G. (1996). The McDonaldization of Society. New York : Thousand Oaks.
Scott, J. (2014). A Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
