division of labor

Separation of the work force into different categories of labor; dividing the work required to produce a product into a number of different tasks that are performed by different workers.

In the early 1900s, Max Weber, one of the pioneers of modern sociology, designed a perfectly rational organizational form, called a bureaucracy. Among the characteristics of this "ideal" organization were specialization, division of labor, and a hierarchical organizational design.

Division of labor is a form of specialization in which the production of a product or service is divided into several separate tasks, each performed by one person. According to Weber's design, inherent within the specialization and division of labor is knowledge of the precise limit of each worker's "sphere of competence," and the authority to perform individual tasks without overlapping others.'

Adam Smith, an early economist, suggested that productivity would rise significantly when the division of labor principle was used. Output per worker would be raised while costs per unit produced would be reduced. Division of labor was applied, for example, in manufacturing plants that incorporated mass production tech niques. In organizations that used mass production, each worker specialized in completing one specialized task; the combined work of several specialized workers produced the final product. For example, in manufacturing an automobile, one worker would assemble the dashboard, an other would assemble the wheels, and yet another would paint the exterior.

Since the time of Adam Smith, division of labor has been perceived as a central feature of economic progress. Two aspects of labor exist. First is the division of labor within firms; this concerns the range of tasks performed by workers within a particular firm. Second is the division of labor between firms; this concerns the range of products or services the firm produces.

Current Application of Division of Labor

Fred Luthans (1998) describes the bureaucratic model proposed by Max Weber as an "historical starting point" for organizational analysis. Citing "complex, highly conflicting relationships, advanced information technology, and empowered employees," Luthans (p. 519) discusses the functional and dysfunctional consequences of specialization uncovered in several research studies. For example, although specialization has enhanced productivity and efficiency, it has also led to conflict between specialized units, hindering achievement of the overall goals of the organization. Further, specialization can impede communication among units, as highly specialized units tend to "withdraw into themselves and not fully communicate with other units above, below, or horizontal to it: (Luthans, p. 519). In addition, highly specialized jobs can lead to employee boredom and burnout.

Given these concerns, a significant change is under way in management of work in organizations. According to Richard Walton (1991), the work force can be managed in two ways, one based on control and the other based on commitment. Key factors that differ between the control and commitment approaches are job design principles, performance expectations, management organization (structure, systems, and style), compensation policies, employment assurances, employee input in policies, and labor-management relations (Walton, 1991).

The control-oriented approach is based on the classic bureaucratic principles of specialization and division of labor. In the control-oriented environment, worker commitment does not flourish. Division of labor can ultimately reduce productivity and increase costs to produce units. Several reasons are identified as causes for reduction in productivity. For example, productivity can suffer when workers become bored with the monstrous repetition of a task. Additionally, productivity can be affected when workers lose pride in their work because they are not producing an entire product they can identify as their own work. A breakdown in the mass production line can bring an entire production line to a standstill. And, with highly specialized jobs, worker training can be so narrowly focused that workers cannot move among alternate jobs easily. Consequently, productivity can suffer when one key worker is absent. Finally, discontent with control is increasing in today's work force, further hindering the long-term success of the classic bureaucratic application of specialization and division of labor.

In contrast to the control-oriented approach, the commitment-oriented approach proposes that employee commitment will lead to enhanced performance. Jobs are more broadly designed and job operations are upgraded to include more responsibility. Control and coordination depend on shared goals and expertise rather than on formal position. The control and commitment oriented approaches are only one way to view the concepts of division of labor and specialization. These concepts influenced organizations in the late 1990s by a complex array of organizational dynamics.

In response to such complex organizational dynamics as intense competitive pressures, organizations were being restructured. Hierarchies were becoming flatter, meaning that fewer levels of management existed between the lowest level of worker and top management. In some organizations, web-like and network organizational structures were replacing traditional hierarchical organizations (Kerka, 1994). In these redesigned organizations, the shift was away from departments that focused on traditional organizational functions such as production, administration, finance, design, and marketing (Lindbeck and Snower, 1997).

In these redesigned organizations, the shift was away from highly-specialized jobs toward workers performing a multitude of tasks within relatively small autonomous customer-oriented teams. In these working groups, workers were given a broad task specification by management and within those loose constraints, the teams were allowed to organize, to allocate roles, to schedule tasks, and so forth (Bessant, 1991). With this design, traditional occupational barriers and clear-cut specialized job descriptions began evaporating as workers were empowered to define their own job tasks; this movement resulted in a decrease of the division of labor and specialization within firms.

As a consequence of these changes, during the 1990s, increased division of labor between firms was often accompanied by a reduction in the division of labor within firms. In other words, while firms were becoming more specialized in the products and services they offered, individual workers within firms were handling an increasing range and depth of job responsibilities. As mentioned earlier, this work was often completed in autonomous teams.

Effects of Size, Cost, and Performance on Division of Labor

In some organizations, division of labor and the degree of specialization are being reduced, while in other organizations, division of labor and specialization are increasing. A number of factors can influence this discrepancy among organizations.

For example, the degree of specialization and division of labor can be related to the size of the organization; typically, small and mid-sized employers are not able to cost justify specialized division of labor. Lindbeck and Snower (1997) report that, as the costs of communication among workers declines, the degree of specialization, and consequently, division of labor within organizations, may rise. Some literature reports that, as the size of the market increases, it sup ports more division of labor. The degree of division of labor within firms can also depend on the degree to which performance on particular tasks is measurable, and the degree to which wages affect task performance. Implementation of technology can also have a profound influence on the division of labor in organizations.

Effects of Technology on Division of Labor

Computerization has enabled organizations to increase the variety of tasks performed by workers, consequently reducing specialization and division of labor. For example, information technology—flexible machine tools and programmable multipurpose equipment—can reduce the division of labor within firms as workers transfer their knowledge from task to task more easily. Information and manufacturing technology can also enable individual workers or work teams to combine different tasks more readily to meet a customer's needs while enhancing productivity. For example, customer information gained from production activities can be used to improve financial accounting practices, and employee information gained from training activities can be used to improve work practices.

Eric Alsene (1994) reported that increased integration of computer databases has the potential to profoundly alter task and functional assignments in organizations, consequently affecting division of labor and specialization. Originally, the purpose of integrating computers into organizations was to merge the various functions of labor. Computer integration was designed to restructure businesses around their core business processes, outsourcing some activities to specialized external organizations and strengthening partnerships with suppliers and subcontractors. In the newculture shaped by computer integration, every worker was to have a broader view of the organization. Workers were expected to work in teams with enhanced communication, participation, teamwork, and an enhanced sense of belonging and continuous learning. In this new organizational model enabled by technology, the classic bureaucratic mass production model in which workers performed functions separately and sequentially was eliminated.

The computer integration model was designed to ultimately lead to the dismantling of vertical and horizontal barriers while supervisory control concentrated increasingly on work methods rather than on final products (Child, 1987). In other words, the new design enabled organizations to focus on how products and services were delivered rather than on what products or services were delivered. This design facilitated continuous improvement in the organization. The newtechnologies assisted in blurring the boundaries among departments while information flowed freely throughout the organization, thereby disregarding the traditional bureaucratic hierarchy. As work groups and task forces were formed, units no longer worked in isolation.

The new model enabled by technology calls into question the traditional division of labor in organizations. For example, flexible manufacturing systems eliminate the barrier between maintenance and production. This increased automation supports the movement described earlier of work becoming more diversified, independent, intellectual, and collective.

Summary

The classic principles of division of labor and specialization still exist; however, their application produces both functional and dysfunctional consequences in the increasingly complex organizations of the twenty-first century. A number of factors affect the modern application of division of labor. Along with other complex organizational and market dynamics, these factors include information technology, worker empowerment, human factors, communication systems, organizational size, competitive pressures, and organization structure.

Bibliography

Alsene, Eric. (1994). "Computerization Integration and Organization of Work in Enterprises." International Labor Review. 133(5-6) 657-676.

Bessant, J. (1991). Managing Advanced Manufacturing Technology: The Challenge of the Fifth Wave. Oxford, Blackwell.

Child, J. (1987). "Organizational Design for Advanced Manufacturing Technology," in T.D. Wall, C.W. Clegg, and N.J. Kemp eds. The Human Side of Advanced Manufacturing Technology. Chichester: Wiley.

Kerka, Sandra. (1994). "NewTechnologies and Emerging Careers. Trends and Issues Alerts." Columbus, OH: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education.

Lindbeck, Assar, and Snower, Dennis J. (1997). "The Division of Labor Within Firms." Stockholm, Sweden: Institute for International Economic Studies, University of Stockholm.

Luthans, Fred. (1998). Organizational Behavior. Boston, MA: Irwin McGraw-Hill.

Walton, Richard E. (1991). "From Control to Commitment in the Workplace: In Factory After Factory, There Is a Revolution Under Management of Work." Readings on Labor-Management Relations. Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor-Management Relations and Cooperative Programs.

[Article by: DONNA L. MCALISTER-KIZZIER]

The partitioning of a production process into separate elements, with each part assigned to a different worker or set of workers. It is based on the idea that workers can attain a high degree of efficiency if they are restricted to one particular process. Division of labour is one of the hallmarks of the factory system, but can lead to the alienation of the workforce as the workers lose touch with the creative process.

A social division of labour divides workers according to their product: steelworkers, miners, and so on. A sexual division of labour is a separation of jobs into male and female tasks, and in UK many jobs, such as nursing and bricklaying are highly gendered; in the context of paid work this is known as occupational segregation. There are also global patterns; the international division of labour describes the pattern of highly paid, more-skilled work in the advanced economies, and low-paid, less-skilled work in the Third World. Increasingly, transnational corporations capitalize on this pattern, and it is not uncommon for a major manufacturer to locate unskilled parts of the production process, such as assembly, in LEDCs, while the design and manufacture of the component parts has been carried out in an MEDC.

The systematic (but not necessarily planned or imposed) division of functions, tasks, or activities. Plato's Republic is built upon a functional division of labour: the Philosophers determine the law, the Auxiliaries act as a military force and executive branch, and the Producers undertake the economic activity necessary to provide everyone with sustenance and themselves with comfort. This particular division of labour, Plato argues, reflects the requirements of nature (since individuals have different natural capacities) while producing a harmonious whole. Other important forms of the division of labour are sexual, geographical, and social. Men and women have undertaken different activities, although contemporary understandings of what is conventional or the result of domination reject earlier views of what is natural in such arrangements. Geographical division of labour may emerge where different localities have different climatic and soil conditions; one form which has been thought important is the division of labour between town and country. Social division of labour refers to the separation of activities between individuals within society, and is often linked to the existence of classes. The division of labour has been regarded as an important explanation of increased productivity in industrial society, although it has also been identified with alienation, demoralization, and the imposition of labour discipline. These negative features of the division of labour have been particularly emphasized in relation to the removal of direct producers from the product market, and the intensification of the division of labour involved when one person repetitively performs the same detailed operation. Whether a ‘harmonious whole’ coexists with extensive division of labour, or how one might be achieved, remain fundamental issues.

— Andrew Reeve

For more information on division of labour, visit Britannica.com.

The process by which tasks are separated and become more specialized. American football teams with their highly specialized teams of offence and defence, their specialized kickers and punters, provide an example of division of labour in sport.

Division of labor, the parceling out of work based on various categories of identity, is understood commonly as a division made on the basis of gender. Indeed, food production, preparation, and even consumption are often differentiated on the basis of gender: men do some tasks and women do others. For example, cooking is widely recognized as an essentially female task (Murdock and Provost, p. 208). However, division of labor can apply to class, ethnicity, and age as well, and these categories also intersect with how people produce, prepare, and consume food.

Food Production

The division of labor begins when food production begins, which is a pattern rooted in the history of humanity. The earliest humans tended to divide their work by category, where men hunted and fished and women gathered vegetable foods (fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts). Among foraging societies, women still take on the greater portion of food-preparation tasks, such as grinding, pounding, boiling, and otherwise processing gathered and hunted foods into edible meals. For the few societies that still procure their food in the hunting-and-gathering strategy, a large percentage of the diet is made up of non-meat foods, with meat functioning as a much-desired and prized treat (Lee, pp. 256–258).

As societies adopted farming as a means of food production, dividing food production by gender persisted, yet much of this division was based on cultural understandings of gender rather than a physical advantage on the part of men or women. For example, among the Maring of New Guinea, numerous agricultural tasks are divided on the basis of gender: men and women together clear gardens, but only men fell trees. Both men and women plant crops, but weeding is a primary female occupation. At harvest time, men harvest above-ground crops and women harvest below-ground crops (Rappaport, pp. 38–40, 43). These are categories based on cultural understandings, similar to how grilling and barbecuing are identified as male tasks in many Western societies.

An extreme case of agricultural specialization is found in much of sub-Saharan Africa, where subsistence agriculture is a predominantly, sometimes exclusively, female task. Agricultural economist Ester Boserup notes that in sub-Saharan cultures, the shift to a more urbanized society often reduces women's status, for although rural farm women may not be socially equal to their husbands, their work on farms is recognized and valued. A shift into a more "Westernized" work pattern can eliminate what power such women do have (pp. 53–63). However, agricultural work patterns vary widely. In societies where plow agriculture is common, women are often likely to process food in the home, while the actual farm labor falls to men; yet even in those societies, women may weed and harvest or keep kitchen gardens. In the United States, women's farm participation varies from negligible to great. The publication Marketing to Women notes that although the number of women farmers in the United States is on the rise, women tend to own the smallest farms. At the same time, women are far more likely to own their farms: fully 80 percent of women farmers are farm owners, in contrast to the 58 percent of male farmers who own their farms.

Preparing Foods

Food preparation, particularly that which occurs in the home and family, is most strongly associated with women and women's work. This is a pattern that has been documented widely. Journalist Laura Shapiro and food writer Ruth Reichl outline the history of this development in the United States in Perfection Salad, their account of the "domestic science" movement. As a result of this movement, women's work came to be viewed as professional, and cooking and other domestic activities were elevated to a woman's highest calling. (See also Cowan. Numerous works from a range of disciplines document this pattern. Among them are works by Sherrie A. Inness and the U.S. sociologist Arlie Hochschild.)

Similar patterns have emerged in other societies, although the underlying cultural ideals may differ. Anne Allison describes the great attention that Japanese mothers give to the preparation of their preschool children's boxed lunches. Young children attend preschool from three to six years of age, where they bring elaborately prepared lunches with them. Mothers organize other family meals around lunch preparation and spend as much as forty-five minutes each morning preparing lunch for their preschoolers. Men never prepare such lunches, and no adult that Allison interviewed could ever recall their father preparing a lunch. Indeed, the elaborate and beautifully presented lunch reflects well on the mother and signals her devotion to her children in the eyes of other mothers and of the preschool staff.

The association of women and domestic food preparation is sufficiently strong that men's cooking requires explanation. In some societies, men prepare special or ritual meals. The ethnographic film The Feast, by Timothy Asch, shows Yanomamo men preparing and eating a ritual meal, which is unusual in this strongly patriarchal Amazonian society.

Other Types of Divisions

However, gender is not the only way that labor is divided. This is true for food preparation, as it is for many other types of labor. Class or rank is a major category of division. For example, among the affluent in society, in modern times as well as in the past, servants often prepare food for the household. Also, certain kinds of foods might only be prepared or consumed by people of specific social classes. Archaeologist Christine Hastorf's work in Peru traced the preparation and consumption of corn, in the form of corn beer, through the pre-Incan and Incan periods. Using a sophisticated array of techniques, Hastorf compared the presence of corn pollens among different house sites and throughout neighborhoods. Over time, the presence of pollen, generally found in the patios and yards where women prepared food, was concentrated in the house sites of elite classes. The preparation of corn slowly shifted from most women to elite women. Further comparisons of this type showed that over the same period of time, women's consumption of corn decreased overall, while men's consumption increased in elite neighborhoods. Hastorf hypothesized that with the rise of the Incan Empire, elite women became increasingly specialized corn-beer producers and elite men became the beer's main consumers.

Perhaps the most striking change in U.S. food preparation is that most people do not prepare their own food. An increasing number of people pay to eat food that is prepared elsewhere, whether they pick up burgers at a drive-through restaurant, order pizza, or buy prepared meals in markets. This pattern has been noted for much of the past twenty years (see Gonzales) and continues to intensify.

Bibliography

Allison, Anne. "Japanese Mothers and 'Obentos': The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus." Anthropological Quarterly 64 (1991): 195–209.

Asch, Timothy. The Feast. Watertown, Mass.: Documentary Educational Resources, 1969. Film.

Boserup, Ester. Woman's Role in Economic Development. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1970.

Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. Reissue. Boston: Basic Books, 1985.

Gonzales, Monica. "Faster's Better." American Demographics 10, no. 7 (July 1988): 22.

Hastorf, Christine A. "Gender, Space and Food in Prehistory." In Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, edited by Joan Gero and Margaret Conkey. London: Blackwell, 1991.

Hochschild, Arlie. Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. Reissue. New York: Avon, 1997.

Inness, Sherrie A. Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture. Ames: University of Iowa Press, 2001.

Inness, Sherrie A., ed. Kitchen Culture in America: Popular Representations of Food, Gender, and Race. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

Lee, Richard B. The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Murdock, G. P., and Catarina Provost. "Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex: A Cross-Cultural Analysis." Ethnology 9 (1973): 122–225.

"The Number of Women Farmers Is on the Rise." Marketing to Women: Addressing Women and Women's Sensibilities 14, no. 2: (February 2001): 7.

Rappaport, Roy. Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People. 2d ed. Prospect Heights: Waveland, 2000.

Shapiro, Laura, and Ruth Reichl. Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century. Reissue. New York: Modern Library, 2001.

—Robin O'Brian

Dividing a job into many specialized parts, with a single worker or a few workers assigned to each part. Division of labor is important to mass production.

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (September 2009)

Division of labour or economic specialization is the specialization of cooperative labour in specific, this is it circumscribed tasks and roles, intended to increase the productivity of labour. Historically the growth of a more and more complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation processes.

Contents 1 Trade and Economic Interdependence 2 Global Division of Labour 3 Early Theorists 3.1 Plato 3.2 Xenophon 3.3 William Petty 3.4 Bernard de Mandeville 3.5 David Hume 3.6 Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau 3.7 Adam Smith 3.8 Karl Marx 3.9 Henry David Thoreau 3.10 Émile Durkheim 3.11 Ludwig von Mises 3.12 Friedrich A. Hayek on the price system 4 Globalisation 5 Modern debates 6 Sexual division of labour 7 See also 8 Further reading 9 References 10 External links

Trade and Economic Interdependence

The division of labour makes trade necessary and is the source of economic interdependence.

Global Division of Labour

There exist, as yet, few comprehensive studies of the global division of labour (an intellectual challenge for researchers), although the ILO and national statistical offices can provide plenty of data on request for those who wish to try.

In one study, Deon Filmer estimated that 2,474 million people participated in the global non-domestic labour force in the mid-1990s. Of these,

• around 15%, or 379 million people, worked in industry,
• a third, or 800 million worked in services, and
• over 40%, or 1,074 million, in agriculture.

The majority of workers in industry and services were wage & salary earners - 58 percent of the industrial workforce and 65 percent of the services workforce. But a big portion were self-employed or involved in family labour. Filmer suggests the total of employees worldwide in the 1990s was about 880 million, compared with around a billion working on own account on the land (mainly peasants), and some 480 million working on own account in industry and services. "ILO Global Employment Trends report" indicates that services have surpassed agriculture for the first time in human history: "In 2006 the service sector’s share of global employment overtook agriculture for the first time, increasing from 39.5 per cent to 40 per cent. Agriculture decreased from 39.7 per cent to 38.7 per cent. The industry sector accounted for 21.3 per cent of total employment."

Early Theorists

Plato

In Plato's Republic we see that the origin of the state lies in the natural inequality of humanity, which is embodied in the division of labour.

'"Well then, how will our state supply these needs? It will need a farmer, a builder, and a weaver, and also, I think, a shoemaker and one or two others to provide for our bodily needs. So that the minimum state would consist of four or five men...." (The Republic, Page 103, Penguin Classics edition.)

Xenophon

Xenophon, writing in the fourth century BC makes a passing reference to division of labour in his 'Cyropaedia' (aka Education of Cyrus).

"Just as the various trades are most highly developed in large cities, in the same way food at the palace is prepared in a far superior manner. In small towns the same man makes couches, doors, ploughs and tables, and often he even builds houses, and still he is thankful if only he can find enough work to support himself. And it is impossible for a man of many trades to do all of them well. In large cities, however, because many make demands on each trade, one alone is enough to support a man, and often less than one: for instance one man makes shoes for men, another for women, there are places even where one man earns a living just by mending shoes, another by cutting them out, another just by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but assembles the parts, Of necessity, he who pursues a very specialised task will do it best." (Book VIII, ch, ii, 4[]-6, cited in The Ancient Economy by M. I. Finley. Penguin books 1992, p 135.)

William Petty

Sir William Petty was the first modern writer to take note of division of labour, showing its existence and usefulness in Dutch shipyards. Classically the workers in a shipyard would build ships as units, finishing one before starting another. But the Dutch had it organised with several teams each doing the same tasks for successive ships. People with a particular task to do must have discovered new methods that were only later observed and justified by writers on political economy.

Petty also applied the principle to his survey of Ireland. His breakthrough was to divide up the work so that large parts of it could be done by people with no extensive training.

Bernard de Mandeville

Bernard de Mandeville discusses the matter in the second volume of The Fable of the Bees. This elaborates many matters raised by the original poem about a 'Grumbling Hive'. He says:

But if one will wholly apply himself to the making of Bows and Arrows, whilst another provides Food, a third builds Huts, a fourth makes Garments, and a fifth Utensils, they not only become useful to one another, but the Callings and Employments themselves will in the same Number of Years receive much greater Improvements, than if all had been promiscuously followed by every one of the Five.

David Hume

David Hume talks about "partition of employments" in "A Treatise of Human Nature" (1739):

When every individual person labours a-part, and only for himself, his force is too small to execute any considerable work; his labour being employ’d in supplying all his different necessities, he never attains a perfection in any particular art; and as his force and success are not at all times equal, the least failure in either of these particulars must be attended with inevitable ruin and misery. Society provides a remedy for these three inconveniences. By the conjunction of forces, our power is augmented: By the partition of employments, our ability encreases: And by mutual succour we are less expos’d to fortune and accidents. ’Tis by this additional force, ability, and security, that society becomes advantageous.

Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau

In his introduction to l’”Art de l’Épinglier”^[1] - The Art of the Pin-Maker - (1761), Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau writes about the "division of this work"^[2]:

There is nobody who is not surprised of the small price of pins; but we shall be even more surprised, when we know how many different operations, most of them very delicate, are mandatory to make a good pin. We are going to go through these operations in a few words to stimulate the curiosity to know their detail; this enumeration will supply as many articles which will make the division of this work. [...] The first operation is to have brass go through the drawing plate to calibrate it. [...]

By "division of this work", Duhamel du Monceau is referring to the subdivisions of the text describing the various trades involved in the pin making activity. Adam Smith has most likely misunderstood the text in French, and thought that Duhamel du Monceau was talking about the "division of labour"^[3].

Adam Smith

In the first sentence of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith foresaw the essence of industrialism by determining that division of labour represents a qualitative increase in productivity. His example was the making of pins. Unlike Plato, Smith famously argued that the difference between a street porter and a philosopher was as much a consequence of the division of labour as its cause. Therefore, while for Plato the level of specialisation determined by the division of labour was externally determined, for Smith it was the dynamic engine of economic progress. However, in a further chapter of the same book Smith criticises the division of labour saying it leads to a 'mental mutilation' in workers; they become ignorant and insular as their working lives are confined to a single repetitive task. The contradiction has led to some debate over Smith's opinion of the division of labour.

The specialisation and concentration of the workers on their single subtasks often leads to greater skill and greater productivity on their particular subtasks than would be achieved by the same number of workers each carrying out the original broad task.

Smith saw the importance of matching skills with equipment - usually in the context of an organisation. For example, pin makers were organised with one making the head, another the body, each using different equipment. Similarly he emphasised a large number of skills, used in cooperation and with suitable equipment, were required to build a ship.

In modern economic discussion the term human capital would be used. Smith's insight suggests that the huge increases in productivity obtainable from technology or technological progress are possible because human and physical capital are matched, usually in an organisation. See also a short discussion of Adam Smith's theory in the context of business processes.

Karl Marx

Increasing the specialisation may also lead to workers with poorer overall skills and a lack of enthusiasm for their work. This viewpoint was extended and refined by Karl Marx. He described the process as alienation; workers become more and more specialised and work repetitious which eventually leads to complete alienation. Marx wrote that "with this division of labour", the worker is "depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine". He believed that the fullness of production is essential to human liberation and accepted the idea of a strict division of labour only as a temporary necessary evil.

Marx's most important theoretical contribution is his sharp distinction between the social division and the technical or economic division of labour. That is, some forms of labour co-operation are due purely to technical necessity, but others are purely a result of a social control function related to a class and status hierarchy. If these two divisions are conflated, it might appear as though the existing division of labour is technically inevitable and immutable, rather than (in good part) socially constructed and influenced by power relationships.

It may be, for example, that it is technically necessary that both pleasant and unpleasant jobs must be done by a group of people. But from that fact alone, it does not follow that any particular person must do any particular (pleasant or unpleasant) job. If particular people get to do the unpleasant jobs and others the pleasant jobs, this cannot be explained by technical necessity; it is a socially made decision, which could be made using a variety of different criteria. The tasks could be rotated, or a person could be assigned to a task permanently, and so on.

Marx also suggests that the capitalist division of labour will evolve over time such that the maximum amount of labour is productive labour, where productive labour is defined as labour which creates surplus value.

In Marx's imagined communist society, the division of labour is transcended, meaning that balanced human development occurs where people fully express their nature in the variety of creative work that they do.

Henry David Thoreau

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (August 2009)

Thoreau criticized the division of labour in Walden (published in 1854), on the basis that it removes people from a sense of connectedness with society and with the world at large, including nature. He claimed that the average man in a civilized society is less wealthy, in practice, than one in a "savage" society. The answer he gave was that self-sufficiency was enough to cover one's basic needs.

Thoreau's friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, criticized the division of labour in "The American Scholar"; a widely-informed, holistic citizenry is vital for the spiritual and physical health of the country.

Émile Durkheim

Émile Durkheim wrote about a fractionated, unequal world by dividing it along the lines of "human solidarity," its essential moral value is division of labour. In 1893 he published "The Division of Labour in Society", his fundamental statement of the nature of human society and its social development. According to Franz Borkenau it was a great increase in division of labour occurring in the 1800s after the Industrial Revolution that introduced the abstract category of work, which may be said to underlie, in turn, the whole modern, Cartesian notion that our bodily existence is merely an object of our (abstract) consciousness.

Ludwig von Mises

On the other hand, Marx's theories, including the negative claims regarding the division of labour have been criticized by the Austrian economists, such as Ludwig von Mises.

The main argument here is the gains accruing from the division of labour far outweigh the costs; it is fully possible to achieve balanced human development within capitalism, and alienation is more a romantic fiction. After all, work is not all there is; there is also leisure time.

Friedrich A. Hayek on the price system

From "The Use of Knowledge in Society"...'The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use (though he is still very far from having learned to make the best use of it) after he had stumbled upon it without understanding it. Through it not only a 'division of labor' but also a coördinated utilization of resources based on an equally divided knowledge has become possible. The people who like to deride any suggestion that this may be so usually distort the argument by insinuating that it asserts that by some miracle just that sort of system has spontaneously grown up which is best suited to modern civilization. It is the other way round: man has been able to develop that division of labor on which our civilization is based because he happened to stumble upon a method which made it possible. Had he not done so, he might still have developed some other, altogether different, type of civilization, something like the "state" of the termite ants, or some other altogether unimaginable type'...Friedrich A. Hayek^[4]

Globalisation

The issue reaches its broadest scope in the controversies about globalisation, which is often interpreted as a euphemism for the expansion of world trade based on comparative advantage. This would mean that countries specialise in the work they can do at the lowest opportunity cost. Critics however allege that international specialisation cannot be explained sufficiently in terms of "the work nations do best", rather this specialisation is guided more by commercial criteria, which favour some countries over others.

The OECD recently advised (28 June 2005) that:

"Efficient policies to encourage employment and combat unemployment are essential if countries are to reap the full benefits of globalisation and avoid a backlash against open trade... Job losses in some sectors, along with new job opportunities in other sectors, are an inevitable accompaniment of the process of globalisation... The challenge is to ensure that the adjustment process involved in matching available workers with new job openings works as smoothly as possible."

Modern debates

In the modern world, those specialists most preoccupied in their work with theorising about the division of labour are those involved in management and organisation. In view of the global extremities of the division of labour, the question is often raised about what division of labour would be most ideal, beautiful, efficient and just.

It is widely accepted that the division of labour is to a great extent inevitable, simply because no one can do all tasks at once. Labour hierarchy is a very common feature of the modern workplace structure, but of course the way these hierarchies are structured can be influenced by a variety of different factors.

It is often agreed that the most equitable principle in allocating people within hierarchies is that of true (or proven) competency or ability. This important Western concept of meritocracy could be read as an explanation or as a justification of why a division of labour is the way it is.

In general, in capitalist economies, such things are not decided consciously. Different people try different things, and that which is most effective cost-wise (produces the most and best output with the least input) will generally be adopted. Often techniques that work in one place or time do not work as well in another. This does not present a problem, as the only requirement of a capitalist system is that you turn a profit.

Sexual division of labour

The clearest exposition of the principles of sexual division of labour across the full range of human societies can be summarised by a large number of logically complementary implicational constraints of the following form: if women of childbearing ages in a given community tend to do X (e.g., preparing soil for planting) they will also do Y (e.g., the planting) while for men the logical reversal in this example would be that if men plant they will prepare the soil. The 'Cross Cultural Analysis of the Sexual Division of Labor by White, Brudner and Burton (1977, public domain), using statistical entailment analysis, shows that tasks more frequently chosen by women in these order relations are those more convenient in relation to childrearing. This type of finding has been replicated in a variety of studies, including modern industrial economies. These entailments do not restrict how much work for any given task could be done by men (e.g., in cooking) or by women (e.g., in clearing forests) but are only least-effort or role-consistent tendencies. To the extent that women clear forests for agriculture, for example, they tend to do the entire agricultural sequence of tasks on those clearings. In theory, these types of constraints could be removed by provisions of child care, but ethnographic examples are lacking.

See also

• Industrial Revolution
• Industrialisation
• Urbanization
• Price system

Sociology of Division of labour:

• Complex society
• Gender role
• Hierarchy
• Organisation
• Productive and unproductive labour
• Surplus product
• Taylorism
• Time use survey

Further reading

• Gary S. Becker (1991). A Treatise on the Family, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-90698-5,

ch. 2, "Division of Labor in Households and Families"

Supplement "Human Capital, Effort, and the Sexual Division of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics, 3(1) Part 2 1985), pp. S33-S58.

• Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century
• Stephanie Coontz & Peta Henderson, Women's Work, Men's Property: The Origins of Gender and Class.
• Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar."
• Deon Filmer, Estimating the World at Work, a background report.
• Richard Florida, The rise of the creative class.
• Richard Florida, The flight of the creative class.
• F. Froebel, F., J. Heinrichs and O. Krey, The New International Division of Labour. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert T. Boyd and Ernst Feghr. Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life.
• Robert E. Goodin, James Mahmud Rice, Antti Parpo and Lina Eriksson (2008), "Part V: Household Regimes Matter," Discretionary Time: A New Measure of Freedom, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 197-257.
• André Gorz, The Division of Labour: The Labour Process and Class Struggle in Modern Capitalism.
• Peter Groenewegen (1987). "division of labour," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 1, pp. 901-07.
• James Heartfield, "The Economy of Time"
• Bertell Ollman, Sexual and social revolution.
• Ali Rattansi, Marx and the Division of Labour.
• George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics.
• Murray Rothbard, Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism and the Division of Labor [1]
• Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics pp. 142-176 [2]
• George J. Stigler (1951), "The Division of Labor is Limited by the Extent of the Market," Journal of Political Economy, 59(3), pp. 185-193.
• World Bank, World Development Report 1995. Washington DC.

References

1. ^ R. Réaumur and A. de Ferchault. Art de l'Épinglier avec des additions de M. Duhamel du Monceau et des remarques extraites des mémoires de M. Perronet, inspecteur général des Ponts et Chaussées. Paris, Saillant et Nyon, 1761.
2. ^ Scan of the text of l'"Art de l'Épinglier", with the expression "division de ce travail".
3. ^ Jean-Louis Peaucelle, Adam Smith et la division du travail : La naissance d'une idée fausse, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2007, ISBN 2296035493, 9782296035492 Google Books, p. 182.
4. ^ http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:blv3cDigeGcJ:www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html+origin+of+the+political+price+system&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us Editor/Trans.First Pub. Date Sep. 1945 Publisher/Edition American Economic Review. XXXV, No. 4. pp. 519-30. American Economic Association Author Hayek, Friedrich A. Retrieved Oct-8-09

External links

• Summary of Smith's example of pin-making

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)