About Organizational Leadership

An organization’s management is a dynamic position. Any organization’s administration involves a number of important factors. The managers of the organization must deal with issues including morality, culture, interpersonal relationships, teamwork, and leadership skills. Every organization has a set of ethical principles that govern its policies, initiatives, and commercial choices. The productivity, reputation, and overall success of a company can all be impacted by its values and guiding principles. Additionally, organizations have their own distinctive working methods that frequently add to their cultures.

Groups play a key role in organizational contexts, and research into these groups and group dynamics is critical to understanding organizational behavior. When these groups with similar tastes, attitudes, and interests come together to work towards a common goal, a team is formed. As such, team building is a significant prerequisite in meeting organization’s objectives and goals. All these elements of organizational management are brought together by good leadership abilities. Effective leadership is the key to the success of any organization.

This paper analyzes McDonald’s and its ethical, cultural, group dynamics, team building, and leadership abilities. McDonald’s is one of the largest fast food retailers in the United States. The primary products of the company include chicken products, cheeseburgers, hamburgers, breakfast items, French fries, milkshakes, desserts, and soft drinks. The company works with the philosophy of serving high-quality fast food products and consistent methods of preparation across all its outlets. The company strives to provide top quality drinks and food at affordable prices in the United States and more than 100 other countries. The global system of the company comprises of both franchised and company-owned restaurants. The company’s franchised restaurants are operated under any of the following major structures; affiliate, development license, of a conventional franchise.

Ethical Consideration at McDonald’s

According to Ogunyemi (2017), ethics has everything to do with management. The management of an organization cannot be successful and effective if it is not ethical. Ethics in organizations have various dimensions. These dimensions include leadership ethics, employee ethics, legal compliance, corporate social responsibility, corruption and business conduct, working conditions and human rights.

McDonald’s is involved in various ethical practices in its business activities. Regarding corporate social responsibility, the company acknowledges giving back to the community as part of its key mission and heritage. The company works with several charities within the United States and in other parts of the country. By working with these charities and communities, the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility appears to be relatively large, hence, appearing ethical and socially active (Kane, 2016).

Despite the fact that McDonald’s seems convenient, clean, and cheap, there are several negative ethical aspects of the business. The company’s model of business is bound to raise various ethical dilemmas. For instance, while the company is praised for producing cheap and high-quality fast food products, it is also accused of violating the working conditions and human rights of its employees. Various analysts and human rights officials claim that McDonald’s treats its employees illegally and criminally. For example, in November 2012, about 200 Eastwood McDonald’s workers went on strike in New York City demanding higher hourly wages and a right to form a union. This strike sparked numerous other strike involving McDonald’s workers in over 35 countries. This indicates the poor working environment that the company offers its employees. As such, it is logical to deduce that McDonald’s is unethical in its management of employees’ working conditions and human rights.

It is ethically required that a company complies with all the laws and regulations of the nation within which it operates. McDonald’s has largely complied with laws and regulations governing business operations in different countries. However, the company has been criticized regarding the ingredients it uses within its products. Some of the ingredients that the company uses in producing its fast food products are believed to be in violation of the health and safety of consumers. This is unethical. Furthermore, there are various accusations that McDonald’s has significant negative impacts on the environment in various ways. The company has built numerous factories around the world, largely contributing to pollution. This jeopardizes the company’s ethical practice.

Cultural Consideration at McDonald’s

The culture of an organization refers to the values, principles, ideologies, and beliefs that the individuals in the organization share. Since many employees spend substantial amounts of time at their workplace, the culture of their organizations largely affects both their professional and personal lives (Jones, et al., 2015). Every organization has its culture. This culture significantly determines the success of the organization.

A program of beliefs and conduct is crucial to running any organization. In this perspective, a company’s culture should be clear and involve all the individuals involved in the organization. The culture should have a clear view and direction on how the employees should treat the customers to uphold the organization’s culture. Having a positive culture in an organization encourages commitment and hard work, which ultimately leads to increase in production (Ogunyemi, 2017).

The vision of the McDonald’s culture includes the employees and the surrounding community. The company believes that employees’ satisfaction leads to high-quality products and better customer services. The company also maintains a promise to improve the wealth of stakeholders. As such, McDonald’s culture is doing the right thing for the customers, the community, and the employees. The company’s culture also involves service to the community through providing support to youth programs and schools. For instance, the company established The Ronald McDonald house to provide support for the disadvantaged children around the world (Kane, 2016).

Group Dynamics at McDonald’s

Effective organizational management takes into account the group dynamics in the organization. According to Ogunyemi (2017), group dynamics refers to the behavioral and attitudinal characteristics of a group. In an organization, group dynamics is concerned with how groups form, their structures, how they function, and their processes.

There are various theories explaining why groups form in organizations. For instance, George Homans developed a classic theory suggesting that groups form by sentiments, interactions, and activities (Ogunyemi, 2017). The theory argues that, when people share common activities, they will have more interaction and will ultimately develop attitudes toward each other. This can be applied in the context of McDonald’s. Employees in this organization share a common activity of producing fast food products. In their production practice, they could interact and form groups. The attitude and behavior of these groups will depend on the organizational activities carried out by members of these groups.

Team Building

Building an effective team is a crucial step towards developing a successful organization. When employees in an organization belong to a team, they develop a feeling of being part of something larger than themselves. This has a lot to do with their understanding of the objectives and the mission of the organization.

Given McDonald’s mode of operation as a restaurant, it is necessary that all the employees in the company work together in teams and follow all the systems to ensure the best delivery of top-quality fast food products to the customers. In efforts to build strong teams, the company selects new employees by their ability to work in teams. At McDonald’s, teamwork forms a significant part of the organization’s performance appraisals and training programs (Kane, 2016). There are numerous teams formed by employees at McDonald’s. Some of them include; The Management team, Drive Thru, Dining Area, Kitchen, and Front Counter.

Leadership at McDonald’s

Effective leadership is the art of motivating and influencing people to perform or act in a way to achieve a common goal. From this point; effective leadership constitutes a leader’s responsibilities, tasks, roles, and interpersonal influences. To effect these, a leader needs not only to be intelligent, but also possess good character, high integrity, and do the right things. From this context, various theories have been postulated to illustrate the factors that influence the effectiveness of a leader. Some of these theories are the trait theory of leadership, the behavioral theory of leadership, the contingency theory of leadership, and the power and influence theory of leadership.

At McDonald’s, the chief executive officer is perceived as the focal point from which the leadership emerges. Since March 2015, the position of CEO at McDonald’s has been entrusted with Stephen James Easterbrook (Kane, 2016). He is believed to be an effective leader with transformational and charismatic qualities. In the position of CEO at the organization, Steve can use any theory of leadership he deems capable of producing desired results for the organization.

References

Jones, G., & George, J. (2015). Contemporary management. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Kane, G. C. (2016). How McDonalds Cooked Up More Transparency. MIT Sloan Management Review, 57(2).

Ogunyemi, K. (2017). Ethics in Business. Managing for Responsibility: A Sourcebook for an Alternative Paradigm.