The McDonald's company is a multinational firm well known in the world. The main activity of the company is to sell food quickly, what we call fast food. Nowadays, it has more than 30,000 franchises under the McDonald's brand, located in more than 120 countries. Born in the United States after the crisis of 1929, it is just in the 50s that the company has considerably developed its activity in the domestic market, thanks to the arrival of the millionaire Ray Kroc. Then, since the seventies, the firm launches its restaurants and its famous logo all around the world, while starting with the big cities of the Western world. Today, McDonald's is one of the most known brands in the world, with Wall Mart, Google and Facebook among others (It is important to underline the fact that in 1996, MacDonald's has dethrone Coca-Cola.).
This firm is the perfect example of an international success.
In spite of some economic slumps, it continues to have excellent turnovers and its exponential growth. Indeed, the international character of McDonald's is flagrant because more than a half of its global turnover is made abroad and today, for one restaurant which opens in the United States, four are opened overseas (per day). Commonly, a restaurant opens each three hours in the world. Obviously, the famous brand knew to make profit from the democratization and expansion of the American culture, because of its origins first, and then because McDonald is one of the symbol who has made that. But it is also the logic and the global organization of the company which allowed this great success. Indeed, the standard model of this company (the system which concerns the McDonald's restaurant such as one that we can find in the United States) is easily exportable and we can establish restaurants everywhere easily in spite of the cultural differences.
[...] We can see in this case that McDonald's must adapt all its policy in function of the country they are. It is not because it is a great multinational that they are above the law. The French legal system gives reason to the employees. The main risk for them and here specifically, is to lose potential clients, as if there are numerous restaurants. However, it could be important to underline the fact that it was the only strike in France, because this one caused important damages to the firm. [...]
[...] We can say that McDonald's is a great success, because of its notoriety, its finances, and the fact that they are located in numerous countries. However, anyone can imagine that this success story was not really easy for the group. They have suffered from numerous criticisms, made by various organizations of consumers. In fact, they were accused to produce junk food, with affordable prices ; accused to be responsible for the problem of obesity in developed countries, and the list is long. [...]
[...] This form of network in co-operation, in which there are the division of all the risks and responsibilities implemented by contractual way, is a mean of limiting the initial investment for the franchisor (so McDonald's) and obtaining a higher and quickly profitability that in the case of an establishment by subsidiary company for example, where the return on investment could be very long, if there is. The geographical dispersion of the point of sales franchises can induce problems of control, but they will be to minimize compared to other organizational forms. [...]
[...] Adding to that, the Mc Arabia is sold in Morocco all the year (very appreciated by the Moroccans for its spiced meat). This is the perfect example of the effort that the company makes. They have adapted their product on the local behaviors, and it is a great success. There are many others examples of that, in all the continents. McDonald's uses two different strategies. The first one consists to adapt the entire identity of the country. I mean that they do not adapt their product, selling some local products and keeping the most famous, but they change their policies. [...]
[...] Finally, we will concentrate our study on the actual problems that the company can meet when there is an intercultural conflict, in particular in the case of the strike of the restaurant of Strasbourg - Denis Saint in France. The firm had indeed great difficulties in overcome the culture of the conflict in the work which is own to France. Table of contents Introduction 1. The internal organization of the firm : global and local 1.1 Presentation of the MacDonald's company 1.2 The system of franchise which permits a controlled autonomy 1.3 A specific system of hierarchy: an international company and a global network of small structures 2. [...]
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