McDonaldization represents a shift from households to institutions. Max Weber describes the ways that the “calculative spirit” of the capitalist enterprise leads to the ‘disintegration of the household’ The argument until this point is that restaurants arose when the main market participants were still domestic households. This changed with the growth of business corporations, representing a shift of power from the household to the corporation.
The corporation is entirely different from Adam Smith’s butcher and baker, whose market orientation was primarily for meal sharing reasons. The new businesses were money-making institutions. Although corporations became “legal persons” in the nineteenth century, they participated in the market without appetites. This intense narrowing of focus meant that institutional activities developed a logic of their own, involving “rationalization” (Weber, 1968).
Hospitality became problematic when profit-making institutions shifted the fundamental priority from meals to money. A small, family business can compromise hospitality for any number of reasons, including the single-minded pursuit of profit.
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The rise of the restaurant and the fate of hospitality