McDonaldization of Ethnographies

I want to expand upon my earlier post where I detail my job as consisting of coordinating many different ethnographies of housing providers.

While I believe this still to be the case I should also mention that these tests we do are heavily regulated.  The testers must fill out the form exactly the way we tell them too and then after that they write up their narrative.  But no tester is perfect.  Some testers fill out the form with perfection, but then will only write up a few sentences for their narrative.  The rule of thumb I tell testers is that if you are there for about a half-hour, your narrative should be single space one page.  A lot happens in 30 minutes!  Other testers will do the reverse (type out a lengthy narrative, but not fill out the appropriate parts of the form).

However, since I can have 5 tests going on in one week, it's difficult to stay on all of these testers.  In addition, the testers don't see it as research, or volunteering for a great cause, or advancing the civil rights of Americans.  Instead, these testers see it as a paycheck.  These testers get paid for their services.  It's almost as if they see it as giving blood.

How do I know? Because I did testing before. And this is similar to the way I saw it.  It was a quick way to get a buck.

So how do we keep them in check? By instituting the McDonaldization process that Ritzer has outlined.

For more information on "McDonaldization" read the wikipedia entry.

There are four components of McDonaldization

1. Efficiency- What's the most efficient, optimal way to do it?
2. Calculability- How can it be measured?
3. Predictability- How can it be made so that it is always similar to other products?
4. Control- How can it be made (specifically made using non-human entities)?

Here is how the work I complete every day matches up to these concepts.

1. Efficient-  I never meet my testers.  I e-mail them their assignments, I follow up with a phone call, and I mail them out a package so that they can mail be back any materials I need.  I never have to leave my office and I can conduct multiple tests in a day.
2. Calculability- We assign each test a number after reading it to judge if discrimination occurred.  After assigning each test a number, it is then entered into a database of all the tests we have done and the number that they have been assigned.
3. Predictability- This concept doesn't translate as well.  The closest parallel I can come up with is the fact that if we find discrimination in our tests, we can litigate against the property managers.  If we win these cases, our organization can be awarded punitive damages.  This money helps balance our budget.  However, a trend I've noticed is that it can become easy to rely on these punitive damages.  This results in it being factored into the upcoming budget, and it is expected that the organization bring the same amount of lawsuits (or greater) to court every year.
4. Control- It seems that as we go further down these concepts, the less sense they make.  However, I will say that I attempt to incorporate computers and technology into my test assignments whenever I can.  When potential testers contact me I would have them fill out an application and after they attended the training I would gain a sense of how good of a tester they would be.  Now I have made a google form that asks them a series of questions.  I use their answer now to judge whether they would be a good tester or not.

The connections I made to my work and the research of George Ritzer seem a little flaky.  But I just wrote more than 638 words and that's all the proof I need.