Tourism and Hospitality Management - McDonalds - Assignment Example

Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : Tourism and Hospitality Management Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx Course : xxxxxxxxxxx @2010 Introduction McDonald's is the largest company in the world in terms of food service. It was started in 1940 by Dick and Mac McDonald’s on 15th May 1940 in San Bernadino (California). It has the main head office located in USA.The first McDonald’s outlet was opened in 1955, Des Plaines, in the Illinois state. The company serves over 47,000,000 customers daily in over 31,000 restaurants it has globally in 121 countries, According to an interview that was conducted on 26th October with Frank McManus(McDonald's Australia vice-president, people resources) in McDonald’s Australia’s main office. Mc Donald’s Australia has 65000 employees, 760 restaurants and customers totaling 1.2 million daily. The restaurants offer a variety of food including fast foods, salads, pasta zoo, deli choice and low-fat muffins. He also commented that “Training is the greatest secret to the success we have”. Even though these restaurants are basically franchises, all of them receive their food and their packaging from the same vendors who have already been approved. This is no exception to the McDonald’s Australia Ltd. The company considers itself a leading food service dealer throughout the world. It has received numerous awards for best performance in environmental policies, food quality as well as health and safety (Hoover’s, 2009). What is the organization’s activity or purpose for existence? MacDonald’s is a food service company offering fast food services to various clients through its various branches located all over the world. The company mostly sells french-fries, hamburgers, desserts, chicken sandwiches, breakfast items, and soft drinks internationally. Other offers include salads, vegetarian items, wraps as well as a variety of localized fares. Who makes up their customer demographic? The company serves over 47,000,000 customers throughout its restaurants daily. The products of MacDonald’s are enjoyed by children, young people, young parents as well as the elderly. The ages of 18-65 are recognized as the major consumers of these products, with the young people and children taking preference on ice-creams, wedges of spicy potato and the happy meals. The tangible and intangible aspects of the service they provide? MacDonald’s services are tailored to meet certain interests like the age group, the culture of the people and the requirements of the government. Apart from the food services offered, the Company provides playing facilities to children (like the indoor and outdoor playgrounds). McDonald’s also contributes towards environmental protection by supporting and funding various environmental conservation movements like the green movements in India. It as well offers financial aid and sponsors various community-related activities. McDonald’s has been occupied with various community-related projects with most of it directed towards the wellbeing of the children. What is the size of the organization: e.g. number of locations, staff numbers? McDonald's has turned into a symbol of globalization, sometimes termed as the society "McDonaldization”. The company has 31,000 restaurants which are found in 121 countries as well as territories all over the world. These restaurants provide employment opportunities to over 1.5 million individuals. This company as well operates some restaurant brands like Piles Café. What are their organizational values and code of conduct? The company has been able to attain a greater level of success due to its policies. Through the values of the company, which are reflected in its aims and objectives, the company has been able to respond to client needs in a prompt, efficient and effective manner while at the same time maintaining higher ethical standards. The aims and objectives of the company include To serve excellent food in a welcoming and enjoyable environment To be a socially accountable company To give better returns to the shareholders To offer its customers with high standard food, value for their money, as well as speedy service. Do they have a mission and vision statement, if so include it? Mission statement The vision of McDonald’s is to be the leading restaurant service provider having the world’s finest fast restaurant service experience. This indicates its dedication to operating and opening excellent restaurants while providing extraordinary service, quality, value, cleanliness and service. All the values indicate that the company is focused on cleanliness and quality in their restaurants. This aim also indicate that the company is committed to ensuring the menu offered is assessed from a nutritional point while collaborating with the health officials and the government for investigation of the improvements. This illustrates their concern for appealing food with health benefits. In order to stress their aim of serving fresh and hygienic products, the company stresses on working with suppliers who comply with the regulations on animal welfare, as set by the legislation. What is the organizational service style? Organizational structure A hierarchical structure may be considered as that structure having a series of employee levels, with every level being controlled by the level that is higher than it. Big organizations, for instance the limited companies, always have a great number of employees totaling to thousands. This enables them to have an organizational structure that is ‘taller’ as well as complex. This organizational structure has several hierarchical levels and functional area divisions like human resource, sales as well as finance. A flat structure, on the other hand, is quite different in comparison to the hierarchical structure (which is also complex). This structure has the shape of a flat diagram; with a single command level. Here, the owner always has control over the assistants and therefore directs the assistants on what is to be done. Still, this owner takes over the major functions like the functions related to marketing, human resource, finance and administration, while the assistants play the role of sellers (Robbins, 2007). All of the restaurants of McDonald's have a structure that is flat. Here, one, manager controls other employees as well as assistants. The same manager makes every decision regarding the business and remains in charge of the key roles. This allows the staff to concentrate on selling, hence it makes their work simple and enables them to give customers more attention. The McDonald's corporation, on the other hand, has its organizational structure being a hierarchical structure. This company is big and has many different departments that have to be in a well-organized manner in order to be quite effective and efficient, especially considering that when employees are not directed properly then the chances of them doing a poor job is high. This structure allows for order in the workplace hence the employees work with no any disturbance thereby saving both time as well as money. The McDonald’s department of operations handles people who are employed or who would like to be employed in the firm. This department is responsible for monitoring and regulating the employee numbers in the firm, and mainly carries out tasks related to recruit, choosing and appointing the new staff. The same department is as well responsible for ending employment, basically through the redundancies, the retirements and the dismissals. It is also responsible for negotiations with trade unions over the grievances and the disciplinary procedures; and their necessary applications. The department is also quite vital in matters regarding the aims of the company in that it helps the company in attaining its aims as well as its objectives. This is done basically through motivation of the staff as well as the hiring of the qualified staff (Miles, 2002). The department of development, concerned with property and their construction, plans, arranges and implements a firm’s product manufacturing by ensuring that the products are produced cheaply and of high quality. This development department assists McDonald’s to achieve the aims and objectives the company has, mainly through production of quality products. The finance department, concerned with the supply chain as well as new product development, remits the employee salaries in every department, while keeping the records concerning the profits and the losses the company makes. The department enables the company to achieve its aims and its objectives through production of charts as well as records illustrating the progress of the business. The restaurants of McDonald’s have different management styles as the one of the head office. They basically use a management style that is autocratic. This happens since they handle the customers directly and due to the fact that during the busy times, proper and correct decisions have to be made very fast so that the customers receive and enjoy excellent customer service. The next reason behind the use of the autocratic management is the fact that the employees with best trainings on specific tasks have the ability to offer these skills during the times that the restaurants are busy and hence require the skills. This ensures that the customers receive quick service efficiently, as opposed to a situation where the staffs decide on their own which tasks to do. In case the staffs make such a choice then the skilled staffs may opt for the tasks that they like rather than the ones that they are trained on (Wild, 2008). What is the service culture and reputation of the business? McDonald’s culture Each business always has several cultures. These cultures always rely much on the Management style as well as the organizational structure that the organization has. Some of the different cultures included are the role culture, the task culture, person culture and the power culture. The role culture best fits an organizational structure that is hierarchical. This emphasizes on employees working as predetermined while abiding by the business rules. Task culture on the other hand is quite effective in star culture and encourages team work. The power culture works excellently in a matrix culture and focuses on a particular dominant leader or individual while the person culture emphasizes provision of administrative support as well as attention to a particular individual within the organization. The person culture is also witnessed in McDonald’s (Harris, 1994). The McDonald’s have several different culture types due to the size of the business and its global offices. All of the head offices in McDonald have several departments which are well-equipped with the skilled management staff s. since the staffs are properly trained to do specific jobs, the departmental management allows them to work on their own, coming in only when critical decisions have to be made or even when a serious problem has erupted. The McDonald’s restaurants operate in a very different manner in that they apply the power culture, where the manager assigns tasks to staff members daily. Proper application of this cultures has enabled the company to be rated as the best food service provider in the world, this has led to its great reputation. Technology and systems used to support customer service? McDonald’s and information communication technology (ICT) The company employs various technologies to enhance the quality of its products and services. High food technology has enabled the business to expand by enhancing its capability to compete in the present global market. Mc Donald’s internal as well as external communications have also been greatly influenced by ICT. The internal customers of McDonald’s are its employees and the external customers being the consumers. The company therefore communicates with both of the customers effectively. The company also communicates with the potential customers. The external ones need communication methods that are quite different (communication mix). The communication mix entails advertisements using mass media, promotional literature, information literature as well as website selling. All these require ICT application, of which without this, such communications would not be possible to McDonald’s (Papa, 2008). In terms of communication with the suppliers, ICT has been quite handy, especially considering that development of a long-term relationship with suppliers is quite essential compared to limiting costs by constantly changing. McDonald’s operate directly with the suppliers, especially on issues regarding quality standards as well as environmental policies. All these would not take place without ICT. The company would also not be able to advertise its products to the customers without ICT, hence it would have not been prosperous (Adelman, 2000). Internal communication The development of intranet has enabled information to be received promptly by the office staff as well as the management who serve in McDonald’s restaurants. This acts as a reference point for marketing materials, the administrative requirements as well as the news. Magazines Mc News is an award winning magazine which is published twice a month for the McDonald’s restaurant staff. This is a people-focused magazine which is lively and which covers the news, activities and the events from various restaurants. Other important internal communications include email system present in every office as well as the company-owned restaurants. The company also conducts surveys on employee satisfaction annually, both for the office staff as well as the restaurant staff. How do they perceive their position in the marketplace? The unique features of MacDonald’s supply chain management can be observed in its global practices of quality, service, cleanliness as well as value principle. Other unique features include its flexibility in pricing and the initiation of new products whenever necessary. All these have been applicable in its outsourcing models within its prospective markets. These have made the company to have a series of success in its operations all over the world, hence boast of being the leading food service dealer throughout the world. What are their customer service standards? Where are they put? Throughout its principles, The Company has been able to strictly comply with the requirements of the various countries where its locations are, including the culture and income of the countries’ consumers. As such, it has attained a higher standard of customer service, a virtue that has led the company to be recognized globally as the leading food service provider. Quality assurance and food quality also have a major contribution here. Quality assurance McDonald’s emphasizes on buying goods from suppliers who comply with the exacting products as well as the hygienic standards that Mc Donald’s requires. These suppliers are assessed according to the environmental policies they have, whereby the company purchases from the suppliers conducting themselves responsibly and in line with the EU guidelines. Food quality the fact that the company serves millions of people on a daily basis enables quality to become a consistent priority, hence the company ensures that there is quality of service right from the crop to the counter. Here, high standards and specifications are required throughout the production to the final delivery, not only for the ingredients of the products but also for the production details, the transportation, the delivery, the preparation and the service. These are all exhaustively monitored (Repenning, 2002). Do they have any form of accreditation and what is it for? The company has received numerous awards for best performance in environmental policies, food quality as well as health and safety. Based on the files of BBB of which the company is a member, the record of the company has been satisfactory hence the company received BBB accreditation. This accreditation implies that the company deals properly with the issues pertaining to consumer complaints. In India as well, the company was awarded by the Sixth Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) a first position in SHE (Safety, Health and Environment) in the year 2009, for its proper execution of appropriated health and environmental policies. Is any customer research conducted when, by whom and why? The global surveys carried out by the company this year to determine the consumption growth and pattern of its products indicates that the customer growth has immensely increased, with much consumption evident in the ages18-65 years. The male customers exceed the female customers in terms of the purchases. In terms of religion and their consumption, Protestants and Catholics lead the way. The prices are as well affordable to low income earners hence the products are bought all over. These products are quite a preferred choice by the degree students. This information, however, is susceptible to change due to customer preferences and other factors. Conclusion Mc Donald’s still remains among the leading food service companies in the world, if not the leading globally. However, for the company to attain the good image and global reputation it had to sacrifice a lot in terms of investments and dedication. The vast investments alone could not do this, as dedication, coupled with the aspiration to offer world-class food, to be socially accountable, to give the share holders better returns and to provide quick service, greatly expanded the company’s image positively across the globe. The company’s mission statement, through strict adherence, led directly to the company currently referred to as the leading food service provider. 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