Unwrapping the McDonald's model: An introduction to dynamic social theory

George Ritzer's famous McDonaldization thesis describes how principles used by this fast-food chain dominate many sectors of society. First published by the Journal of American Culture in 1983 in the article “The ‘McDonaldization’ of Society,” the thesis developed Max Weber's argument that bureaucracy and capitalism trap people in an “iron cage” (stahlhartes Gehäuse) of rationality. Ritzer showed how Max Weber's characteristics of rationalized systems—efficiency, predictability, calculability, the substitution of non-human for human technology, and control over uncertainty—are used in many areas of society, including the “predictability and uniformity of work on the “academic assembly line” (Ritzer, 1998, 49). Ritzer tells a good story about how corporate rationalization spread across the world, through “such disparate phenomena as fast food restaurants, TV dinners, package tours, industrial robots, plea bargaining, and open-heart surgery on an assembly-line basis” (Ritzer, 1983, 100). He correctly anticipated the beginning of a “process that promises even more extraordinary changes” (100). His 20th anniversary edition predicted the “most likely scenario is the continued expansion of the McDonaldization of society” (Ritzer, 2013, x). And so it proved. Since 1983, McDonald's has grown from fewer than 10,000 outlets to about 40,275 locations in over 100 markets by 2023, while its stock (share) price has risen from US$1.12 ($3.38 in 2023 values) to US$270.00 in March 2023, giving it a market capitalization of almost $200bn as the world's 46th most valuable company (Google Finance)—see Figure 1.

However insightful, Ritzer's analysis does not enable people to solve social problems or improve society. If anything, it paralyzes people into believing McDonaldization is an unstoppable behemoth they are powerless to influence. In their controversial book, Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving, Charles Lindblom and David Cohen lamented “the relatively thoughtless wastefulness” of much social research that is “a positive obstruction to social problem solving” (Lindblom & Cohen, 1979, 86). The eminent sociologist Jonathan Turner observed that research “has become increasingly an end in itself without reference to the accumulation of knowledge or to the theoretical cumulation that comes with systematic tests of theories” (Turner, 2001, 10). Five years later, in The Production of Knowledge: The Challenge of Social Science Research, William Starbuck observed that “Hundreds of thousands of talented researchers are producing little of lasting value” because they are focused on producing journal articles rather than knowledge (2006, 5; 142). This futility is compounded by the inability to replicate many social science experiments, and the fact that papers on non-replicable findings are cited more than replicable ones (Serra-Garcia & Gneezy, 2021). The problem is that the “academic assembly line” criticized by Ritzer creates a culture of social science that separates research from social practice, reducing impact (Bastow et al., 2014, 54; 100–4).

It does not have to be like this. Social sciences offer many insightful methods and findings to improve society. In How Social Science Got Better Max Grossman says, “social science will play an important part in the human future,” though it “can make no claim from its own studies that its insights will be usefully incorporated into public opinion or governance” (Grossman, 2021, 250-1). For their insights to be used, social scientists need to help people use knowledge better, as advocated by Chris Argyris et al. through “Action Science” (1985). Lindblom and Cohen point out that “Much of the world's work of problem solving is accomplished not through PSI [professional social inquiry] but through ordinary knowledge, through social learning, and through interactive problem solving” (Lindblom & Cohen, 1979, 91).

This essay addresses the challenge posed by Ritzer's conclusion— “What is needed is not a less rational society, but greater control over the process of rationalization involving, among other things, efforts to ameliorate its irrational consequences” (1983, 107)—by showing how social research can empower people to improve society by working on institutions as social models, equivalent to theories in the physical sciences. To show how people can be empowered, social scientists can learn from one sector that actively uses social research to transform the world—business.

Like Ritzer, this paper uses McDonald's to illustrate a thesis, which is that institutions are everyday social experiments that embody knowledge about how to do things in society. An institution may be defined as any pattern of behavior that continues over time. This is a simpler definition than most, closer to new institutionalism (Lowndes & Roberts, 2013). It is closest to Samuel Huntington's definition of institutions as “stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior” (1973, 12). This definition is consistent with Hodgson's “systems of rules that structure social interactions” where “rules include norms of behaviour and social conventions” (Hodgson, 2015, 501). It covers the wide range of recurring patterns of behavior instituted by people to meet perceived needs, from social norms to global governance. Large institutions are made up of countless smaller units, each of which is a mini-institution. These in turn contain micro-institutions—the rituals, routines, rules, and norms that make it work.

Every institution is a social model, which is replicated, imitated, or modified to produce a range of social outcomes. A social model is never static yet embodies behaviors and knowledge that may persist for generations. It may be seen as a “dynamic social theory” which is tested and developed in reality every day. Most institutions have more complex aims than McDonald's, but it provides a useful illustration of general principles.

McDonald's has ancient antecedents. The institution of fast food can be traced from the dawn of civilization (Freedman, 2007; Higman, 2011). Ancient Greeks described the Egyptian custom of frying and selling fish in the streets of the port city of Alexandria. The custom spread across the Roman world and developed numerous variations to meet the needs of different communities, climates, and cultures. Excavations at Pompeii show well-preserved remains of thermopolia (Latin for “places where hot is sold”), forerunners of McDonald's. Over the centuries people have imitated, modified, replicated, and reinvented models of how to provide food fast and earn a living.

The McDonald brothers entered the fast food business in 1937 after they observed the success of a hot dog cart across the street from where they worked. Their model has been replicated, refined, and reformulated since 1940, from one burger restaurant in San Bernardino, California, to their “Speedee Service System” and first franchise in 1952, burgeoning to over 40,275 restaurants worldwide in 2022 (Statista Research Department, 2023), second in size only to Subway's 42,998 outlets (Chepekmoi, 2019). The model includes rigorous processes to review and renew both its internal operations and external relationships to produce broadly predictable outcomes.

Like a theory in the natural sciences, McDonald's is a replicable model of an aspect of reality that enables many people to achieve specific outcomes—meals, celebrations, employment, identity, returns on investment, status, et cetera. The McDonald's formula includes carefully calibrated actions to ensure consistent outcomes across continents (see, for example, Daszkowski, 2019). Just as space travel depends on the laws of physics being the same everywhere, McDonald's relies on consistency across the many regimes where it operates, including sufficient consumer demand, individuals with entrepreneurial experience and financial resources to run a franchise, reliable supply chains, a robust legal framework, and a regulatory environment. Lindblom and Cohen suggested that policy frameworks which make this stability possible are equivalent to Thomas Kuhn's paradigms in natural science (Lindblom & Cohen, 1979, 77). Despite wide differences between China, India, and the USA, the commercial environments of these countries are sufficiently similar for the McDonald's model to flourish.

Although the core outputs (cheap fast food) have stayed relatively consistent over time, the model itself has changed substantially in response to changes in competition, culture, accounting, environmental concerns, investments, laws, labor conditions, and social norms, as well as internal innovation. As a result, many aspects are very different from 1952. McDonald's now offers halal, vegetarian, and even vegan options. It fulfills different social functions in different locations, from the grab-and-go drive-through in America to places where people hang out with friends in Taiwan. It advertises through social media more than billboards. It is owned by corporate investors rather than two brothers. But it would disappear entirely if it failed to adapt. So long as McDonald's delivers outcomes people want and is financially successful, its evolving model will be widely studied by business students, entrepreneurs, and investors as well as critics (Battye, 2018; Gregory, 2017; Profitworks, n.d.; Smart, 1999; Thompson, 2022).

Closer analysis shows how the distinct layers of knowledge embodied in McDonald's contribute to its cultural and economic power. Understanding these layers can help citizens and social scientists to produce outcomes more important than burgers. But first, it is worth considering why an institution can be seen as equivalent to a theory in the natural sciences.

Theories are models of reality based on analysis of evidence. Good scientific models enable people to achieve predictable outcomes, generate new knowledge, and unlock the power of nature. Social sciences have no equivalent method of modeling social reality to unlock the potential of human societies. Indeed, the very concept of theory in social and political sciences is contested. In his Handbook of Sociological Theory, Turner observed “there is no consensus over how sociology should proceed to explain the social world.” It has “what can only be described as hyperdifferentiation of theories,” each of which “has a resource base of adherents, a place in academia, and a series of outlets for scholarly publications” (Turner, 2006, 1).

It is hard for social science to give us theoretical models of reality that can be consistently relied on because society is constantly changing and the theories themselves influence people's behavior. The nearest thing to a reliable model of how to do things in society is an institution, a pattern of behavior repeated over time, replicated in different contexts, which creates and incorporates new knowledge to meet changing circumstances. A synagogue, school, or street market is recognizable across centuries, countries, and cultures. Each institution embodies knowledge of how to achieve relatively consistent outcomes over time, while adapting to shifting power relations and external conditions. Institutional models are scaled up, refined, and replicated to provide similar functions in many different societies, or adapted to achieve different outcomes. Institutional behaviors and structures are more persistent than the beliefs which guide them, as can be seen, for example, in continuities of form and function from ancient temples through synagogues, churches, and mosques to the secular Sunday Assembly. Each institution is a unique embodiment of how to achieve specific outcomes in a particular time and place. The institution may not be the best “theory” (most aren't), but it can be improved or superseded if people do things differently or want different outcomes. Each institution is tested daily by social reality—a process that is rarely rigorous or scientific—but it is possible to use rigorous methods and science to continuously improve outcomes. Any long-standing institution therefore represents a “cumulation that comes with systematic tests” as sought by Turner (1989), with the best of their kind representing the most advanced theory.

The idea that institutions embody theories recalls Karl Popper's observation that “organic structures are theory-incorporating as well as problem-solving structures.” He wrote “practical problems arise because something has gone wrong, because of some unexpected event. But this means that the organism, whether man or amoeba, has previously adjusted itself (perhaps ineptly) to its environment, by evolving some expectation, or some other structure (say, an organ). Yet such an adjustment is the preconscious form of developing a theory; and since any practical problem arises relative to some adjustment of this kind, practical problems are, essentially, imbued with theories” (Popper, 1976, 133).

Institutions are natural experiments, learning in response to problems and opportunities, imbued with everyday knowledge and preconscious theories about how to solve problems. They are also purposeful, striving to survive, multiply and flourish in their social environment. An institution like McDonald's is imbued with theories about food, customer service, marketing, supply chains, finance, and much else. Its leaders and staff constantly work on many different levels to get the outcomes they want. By seeing institutions like McDonald's as the equivalent of theories in the natural sciences, social scientists can help people unlock the power of society to shape the future and, as Ritzer hoped, ameliorate their irrational consequences. The following section aims to unwrap the many levels of analysis involved in McDonald's as a social model.

Every McDonald's outlet embodies extensive knowledge about how to sell fast food at scale, taught in-store, at eight McDonald's Hamburger University campuses, and in business schools throughout the world. The mission of Hamburger University is to become an “organizational culture hub, introducing a continuous education process for the value chain and transforming knowledge into actual business results” according to their website (University of the People, n.d.). Over 2000 h of training focus on leadership development, business growth, operations, and McDonald's core values. However, McDonald's staff are not the only people involved: customers, investors, regulators, politicians, commentators, and critics can all influence the business. Unwrapping the McDonald's example shows at least nine layers of analysis used by people to influence the outcomes of a social model. Social scientists can help people understand and use all layers of analysis to help people achieve better outcomes from institutions:

Each McDonald's outlet is a unique real-time model that includes the experiences, emotions, aspirations, and beliefs of people involved, as well as the knowledge, skills, processes, routines, and relationships that make it work. The McDonald's company itself is a high-level real-time model that spans the globe, using sophisticated systems of governance, finance, organization, and training as well as human relationships to achieve business results. It has a clear purpose that informs the actions of its leaders, staff, and other stakeholders. They in turn have multiple purposes, such as employment, return on investment, or a quick meal, which McDonald's leaders seek to align with their core purposes.

Real-time models can continue for decades, or even millennia, transmitting patterns of behavior, methods, and knowledge across generations. Shops, street food sellers, and inns are almost universal ancient institutions, but each one is also unique and capable of development. People modify their model to create many different kinds of shops, inns, and street food vendors. People experiment, adapting to changing conditions and beliefs. They create new social models within existing institutions to meet changing needs. For example, an inn in 13th-century Bruges, owned by the Van der Beurze family, became a meeting place for traders that was institutionalized in 1409 as the “Brugse Beurse.” It rapidly became a model for the world's first stock exchanges and a foundation of the emerging capitalist economic system (Murray, 2005). Similarly, in the late 1600s, Edward Lloyd's coffee house in London became a meeting place for merchants to insure their cargoes and ships, from which today's multi-billion insurance market grew (Marcus, 1975, 193). Across the world people are inventing new models that could transform society, just as the institutions of capitalism emerged from medieval Europe. The internet enables people to create entirely new models of shops, such as eBay, Amazon, and the global ecommerce platform Shopify, as well as new models of social relationships and politics. Ahuvia et al. suggested “eBayization” as a counter trend to McDonaldization (2011).

A real-time model may appear to be an “iron cage” of rationality as observed by Weber and Ritzer, but there is always scope to adapt or challenge customary ways of doing things. Toyota, for example, has a different institutional logic based on systems thinking, which involves close attention to the gemba, Japanese for the “place where action happens.”. The Toyota model encourages continuous improvement through employee contributions, quality circles, problems solving, and solution-focused questions by managers on regular “gemba walks” (Dalton, 2019). The highly effective Buurtzorg model of social care in the Netherlands is a radical alternative to bureaucratic public services, enabling nurses to work in small, non-hierarchical, self-managing teams with functional support to provide a wide range of personal, social, and clinical care to clients with no oversight or direction (Buurtzorg, 2023). Cooperatives offer alternative models to capitalist enterprise, employing more than 280 million people in over three million cooperatives across the globe (International Cooperative Alliance).

Each real-time model is an experiment, integrating everyday knowledge with layers of specialized knowledge of how to achieve specific results in a particular time and place. For simplicity, these different kinds of knowledge can be separated into nine or more layers of analysis (see Figure 2). Professional social inquiry, such as sociology, is only one of these and often the least influential or useful in practice. The following sections outline these layers as exemplified by McDonald's.

These nine layers outline some of the many forms of knowledge people use to understand, influence, or run any institution, whether McDonald's, a university or government. Institutions can be analyzed in many other ways, such as Max Weber's theory of bureaucratic rationality. Williamson's New Institutional Economics describes four levels of analysis (norms, formal rules, governance structures, and resources allocation) based on the timescales involved in changing each level (Williamson, 2000). Institutions can also be analyzed in terms of hierarchy, roles, and distribution of power, which vary widely between cultures, or in terms of scale, from micro to macro. The method depends on the purpose of the analysis. My aim is to highlight the different types of analysis used in real-time models, each of which contributes to the collective knowledge embedded in any institution to bring about its outcomes. Like many businesses, these are explicit and prescriptive in McDonald's, but all nine layers are at least implicit in every institution. Social scientists can help people to improve society by consciously working on different layers wrapped up in a real-time model, to develop it as a dynamic social theory of how to bring about specific outcomes. At their pinnacle are artifacts of culture, the stories and symbols people use to replicate or change institutions.

McDonald's wraps all nine layers of analysis within each real-time outlet under its control, integrating a wide range of knowledge into everyday actions to achieve its objectives and replicate or reinvent itself. Lessons from centuries of experience, the latest research, and daily data are embedded through symbols, storytelling, procedures, and physical infrastructure, alongside methods to ensure the model survives and continues to evolve. Conceptual models are only one dimension of our knowledge about society. They can inform real-time institutions, but are a snapshot in time, like an organizational chart that gradually ceases to be relevant. Because people are creative and have agency, real-time models acquire features that are not in any current analysis or abstract theory, like the traders meeting at the Beurse inn or Lloyd's coffee house. Observing how real-time models generate new possibilities will increase people's ability to shape their world. This is what makes them “dynamic social theories.”

A customer or cook from ancient Rome would recognize McDonald's as a modern thermopolium, serving hot food fast. “Thermopolization” could be described as a culture of craft cooking, dependent on slaves in fields and kitchens. People changed this real-time model over millennia, but its modern successors perform the same basic functions for more people, on a larger scale, with greater consistency and less labor-time, generating a financial surplus that contributes to wages, taxes, pension funds, and shareholders. McDonald's is just one of many models of how to provide food, from home cooking, canteens, and soup kitchens to fine dining. All models can be seen as living experiments and working hypotheses (dynamic social theories), tested in practice and replicated to meet a need, belief, or policy. Although McDonald's is a simple institution compared with schools, hospitals, and governments, it is a highly sophisticated model of how to reproduce reliable results in many different cultures and contexts.

No contemporary theory of Roman society could have predicted its future or determined what would happen over a long period. Yet today, people still replicate and refine Roman institutions that underpin our modern world. Legal systems, road networks, cities, states, and the Catholic church all use patterns of behavior and embedded knowledge from Roman times or earlier. Working on the layers of knowledge wrapped up in real-time models gives people greater ability to shape their social world. Abstract theories and conceptual models (the sixth layer of analysis) may be useful, but not necessarily more influential than any other layer. Over time people develop new models that replace the old, just as farming superseded hunter-gathering, money supplanted barter, and courts of law replaced trial by ordeal. McDonald's everyday experiments could lead to a radically different business model in the future. Artificial intelligence, facial recognition, drones, robots, and driverless vehicles could remix McDonald's in unpredictable ways. The eatery could become fully automated with no frontline staff (Ha, 2019). Alternatively, changes in culture, leadership and regulations could transform it into an employee-owned enterprise, serving only vegan meals. What will happen depends on social conditions, commercial success, the decisions people make individually and collectively, and the stories they tell. Current models of social sciences will have as little influence on McDonald's as Ritzer's thesis.

People transform business models all the time to meet changing needs and conditions. Thus, a manufacturer of looms now produces cars (Toyota), a paper mill became a telecom giant (Nokia), or an online student directory became Facebook. Throughout the world, people are transforming schools, health services, states, and other entities, bending Weber's iron cage to create more responsive, humane institutions. Many of today's social science theories will be superseded, but people will continue to develop layers of knowledge embedded in institutions to meet their needs and desires. Social scientists can help create a future that is better for everyone by working with citizens and practitioners to improve social models across all areas of society, just as leaders of McDonald's use research to develop their model for selling meals.

McDonald's is a highly successful model of how to produce and sell cheap meals fast, which has been adopted and adapted by many other organizations. People developed models of how to provide fast food over millennia, from fried fish in the streets of ancient Alexandria to Filet-o-Fish under the Golden Arches. Unwrapping McDonald's reveals nine layers of social knowledge that help people replicate and improve its outcomes. Real-time social models can be seen as “dynamic social theories” that integrate knowledge and experience from all levels, including physical infrastructure, operational templates, values, heuristic methods, generic models, conceptual theories, stories, and symbols. Storytelling has a key role, conveying a sense of identity, belonging, purpose, and values as well as emotion, knowledge, and wider cultural connections. People develop social models (institutions)—or invent new ones—to meet changing circumstances, needs, and aspirations, changing society in the process. Treating institutions as “dynamic social theories” embodying knowledge of how to do things in society will enable social researchers to help people create institutions that are better at solving social problems and meeting people's needs, just as the natural sciences use theories to help people solve problems in the material world. We can transform Weber's iron cage into institutions that free humanity from exploitation and oppression. We can learn from models other than McDonald's, like Buurtzorg, the cooperative movement, Toyota, and other social experiments, to create societies that work better for everyone. A more engaged model of social science would transform the world, not to mention the role and status of social science itself.