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Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
division of labor is the separation of tasks in any system
so that participants may specialize. Individuals, organizations, and
nations are endowed with or acquire specialized capabilities and
either form combinations or trade to take advantage of the
capabilities of others in addition to their own. Specialized
capabilities may include equipment or natural
resources in addition to skills and training and complex
combinations of such assets are often important, as when multiple
items of specialized equipment and skilled operators are used to
produce a single product. The division of labor is the motive for
trade and the
source of economic
interdependence.
After the Neolithic
Revolution, pastoralism and agriculture led to more reliable and
abundant food supplies, which increased the population and led to
specialization of labor, including new classes of artisans,
warriors, and the development of elites. This specialization was
furthered by the process of industrialisation,
and Industrial
Revolution-era factories. Accordingly many classical
economists as well as some mechanical engineers such as Charles
Babbage were proponents of division of labor. Also, having
workers perform single or limited tasks eliminated the long training
period required to train craftsmen, who were replaced with lesser
paid but more productive unskilled workers. Historically, an
increasing division of labor is associated with the growth of total
output
and trade, the
rise of capitalism,
and the increasing complexity of industrialised
processes. The concept and implementation of division of labor has
been observed in ancient Sumerian
(Mesopotamian)
culture, where assignment of jobs in some cities coincided with an
increase in trade and economic interdependence. Division of labor
generally also increases both producer and individual worker
productivity.
In contrast to division of
labor, division of work refers to the division of a large task,
contract, or project into smaller tasks—each with a separate
schedule within the overall project schedule. Division of labor,
instead, refers to the allocation of tasks to individuals or
organizations according to the skills and/or equipment those people
or organizations possess. Often division of labor and division of
work are both part of the economic activity within an industrial
nation or organization.
Theorists
Plato
In Plato's
Republic,
the origin of the state lies in the natural inequality of humanity,
which is embodied in the division of labor.
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, p. 103, Penguin Classics edition.)
Silvermintz notes that,
"Historians of economic thought credit Plato, primarily on
account of arguments advanced in his Republic, as an early proponent
of the division of labor." Notwithstanding this, Silvermintz
argues that, "While Plato recognizes both the economic and
political benefits of the division of labor, he ultimately critiques
this form of economic arrangement insofar as it hinders the
individual from ordering his own soul by cultivating acquisitive
motives over prudence and reason."
Xenophon
Xenophon,
in the fourth century BC, makes a passing reference to division of
labor in his 'Cyropaedia'
(a.k.a. 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 specialized task will do it best.
Ibn Khaldun
The 14th-century scholar Ibn
Khaldun emphasised the importance of the division of labor in the
production process. In his Muqaddimah,
he states:
The power of the individual human being is not sufficient for him to obtain (the food) he needs, and does not provide him with as much as he requires to live. Even if we assume an absolute minimum of food...that amount of food could be obtained only after much preparation...Thus, he cannot do without a combination of many powers from among his fellow beings, if he is to obtain food for himself and for them. Through cooperation, the needs of a number of persons, many times greater than their own number, can be satisfied.
William Petty
Sir
William Petty was the first modern writer to take note of
division of labor, 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 organized 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 (1714). 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
When every individual person labors apart, and only for himself, his force is too small to execute any considerable work; his labor being employed 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 increases: And by mutual succor we are less exposed 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 Art de l'Épinglier [The Art of the
Pin-Maker] (1761),
Henri-Louis
Duhamel du Monceau writes about the "division of this
work":
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; this can also be
described as division of labor.
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
labor represents a substantial increase in productivity. Like du
Monceau, 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 labor as
its cause. Therefore, while for Plato the level of specialization
determined by the division of labor was externally determined, for
Smith it was the dynamic engine of economic progress. However, in a
further chapter of the same book Smith criticizes the division of
labor saying it can lead to "the almost entire corruption and
degeneracy of the great body of the people. … unless government
takes some pains to prevent it."
The contradiction has led to some debate over Smith's opinion of the
division of labor.
Alexis
de Tocqueville agreed with Smith: "Nothing tends to
materialize man, and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of
mind, more than extreme division of labor."
Adam Ferguson
shared similar views to Smith, though was generally more
negative.
The specialization
and concentration of the workers on their single sub-tasks often leads
to greater skill and greater productivity on their particular
sub-tasks 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 organization.
For example, pin makers were organized with one making the head,
another the body, each using different equipment. Similarly he
emphasized 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 organization. See also a short
discussion of Adam Smith's theory in the context of business
processes.
Babbage wrote a seminal
work "On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures"
analyzing perhaps for the first time the division of labor in
factories.
Immanuel Kant
In the Groundwork
of the Metaphysics of morals 1785, Kant notes the value of
the division of labor:
All crafts, trades and arts have profited from the division of labor; for when each worker sticks to one particular kind of work that needs to be handled differently from all the others, he can do it better and more easily than when one person does everything. Where work is not thus differentiated and divided, where everyone is a jack-of-all-trades, the crafts remain at an utterly primitive level.
Karl Marx
Marx argued that
increasing the specialization may also lead to workers with poorer
overall skills and a lack of enthusiasm for their work. He described
the process as alienation:
workers become more and more specialized and work becomes repetitive,
eventually leading to complete alienation from the process of
production. The worker then becomes "depressed spiritually and
physically to the condition of a machine".
Additionally, Marx
argued that division of labor creates less-skilled workers. As the
work becomes more specialized, less training is needed for each
specific job, and the workforce, overall, is less skilled than if one
worker did one job entirely.
Among Marx's theoretical contributions is his sharp distinction
between the economic and the social
division of labor.
That is, some forms of labor co-operation are purely due to
"technical necessity", but others are 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 labor is technically inevitable and immutable,
rather than (in good part) socially constructed and influenced by
power
relationships. He also argues that in a communist
society, the division of labor 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
Henry
David Thoreau criticized the division of labor 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 labor in "The
American Scholar"; a widely informed, holistic citizenry is
vital for the spiritual and physical health of the country.
Émile Durkheim
In his seminal work, The
Division of Labor in Society, Émile
Durkheim
observes that the division of labor appears in all societies and
positively correlates with societal advancement because it increases
as a society progresses. Durkheim arrived at the same conclusion
regarding the positive effects of the division of labor as his
theoretical predecessor, Adam
Smith. In The Wealth of the Nations, Smith observes the
division of labor results in "a proportionable increase of the
productive powers of labor."
While they shared this belief, Durkheim believed the division of
labor applied to all "biological organisms generally" while
Smith believed this law applied "only to human societies."
This difference may result from the influence of Charles
Darwin’s On
the Origin of Species on Durkheim’s writings.
For example, Durkheim observed an apparent relationship between "the
functional specialization of the parts of an organism" and "the
extent of that organism's evolutionary development," which he
believed "extended the scope of the division of labor so as to
make its origins contemporaneous with the origins of life
itself…implying that its conditions must be found in the essential
properties of all organized matter."
Since Durkheim’s division of labor applied to all organisms, he
considered it a "natural
law"
and worked to determine whether it should be embraced or resisted by
first analyzing its functions. Durkheim hypothesized that the
division of labor fosters social
solidarity, yielding "a wholly moral phenomenon" that
ensures "mutual relationships" among individuals.
As social solidarity cannot be directly quantified, Durkheim
indirectly studies solidarity by "classify[ing] the different
types of law to find...the different types of social solidarity which
correspond to it."
Durkheim categorizes: criminal laws and their respective punishments
as promoting mechanical
solidarity, a sense of unity resulting from individuals engaging
in similar work who hold shared backgrounds, traditions, and
values;
and civil laws as promoting organic solidarity, a society in which
individuals engage in different kinds of work that benefit society
and other individuals.
Durkheim believes that organic
solidarity prevails in more advanced societies, while mechanical
solidarity typifies less developed societies.
He explains that, in societies with more mechanical solidarity, the
diversity and division of labor is much less, so individuals have a
similar worldview.
Similarly, Durkheim opines that in societies with more organic
solidarity, the diversity of occupations is greater, and individuals
depend on each other more, resulting in greater benefits to society
as a whole.
Durkheim’s work
enabled social
science to progress more efficiently "in … the
understanding of human social behavior."
Ludwig von Mises
Marx's theories, including the negative claims
regarding the division of labor have been criticized by the Austrian
economists such as Ludwig
von Mises.
The main argument here is the economic gains
accruing from the division of labor far outweigh the costs. It is
argued that it is fully possible to achieve balanced human
development within capitalism, and alienation
is downplayed as mere romantic fiction.
Friedrich A. Hayek
In The
Use of Knowledge in Society, Friedrich
A. Hayek states:
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 coordinated 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.
Globalization and global division of labor
The issue reaches its broadest scope in the
controversies about globalization,
which is often interpreted as a euphemism for the expansion of world
trade based on comparative
advantage. This would mean that countries specialize in the work
they can do at the lowest relative cost measured in terms of the
opportunity
cost of not using resources for other work, compared to the
opportunity costs experienced countries. Critics, however, allege
that international specialization cannot be explained sufficiently in
terms of "the work nations do best", rather this
specialization 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 globalization 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 globalization... The challenge is to ensure that the adjustment process involved in matching available workers with new job openings works as smoothly as possible.
Few studies have taken place regarding the global
division of labor. Information can be drawn from ILO
and national statistical offices.
In one study, Deon
Filmer estimated that 2.474 billion people participated in the
global non-domestic labor 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 and 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 labor.
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. The 2007 ILO Global
Employment Trends Report indicated 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."
Modern debates
In the modern world, those specialists most
preoccupied in their work with theorizing about the division of labor
are those involved in management
and organization.
In view of the global extremities of the division of labor, the
question is often raised about what division of labor would be most
ideal, beautiful, efficient and just.
Two
styles of management that are seen in modern organizations are
control and commitment, control being the division of labor style of
the past and commitment being the style of the future. Control
management is based on the principles of job specialization and the
division of labor. This is the assembly
line style of job specialization where employees are given a very
narrow set of tasks or one specific task. Commitment division of
labor is oriented on including the employee and building a level of
internal commitment towards accomplishing tasks. Tasks include more
responsibility and are coordinated based on expertise rather than
formal position.
Job specialization is advantageous in developing
employee expertise in a field and boosting organizational production.
However, disadvantages of job specialization included limited
employee skill, a dependence on entire department fluency, and
employee discontent with repetitious tasks.
It is widely accepted that the division of labor
is to a great extent inevitable, simply because no one can do all
tasks at once. labor 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.
Size,
cost, and the development of new technology are factors that have
influenced job specialization structures in the modern workplace. The
cost of job specialization is what limits small organizations from
dividing their labor responsibilities, but as organizations increase
in size there is a correlation in the rise of division of labor.
Technological developments have led to a decrease in the amount of
job specialization in organizations as new technology makes it easier
for fewer employees to accomplish a variety of tasks and still
enhance production. New technology has also been supportive in the
flow of information between departments helping to reduce the feeling
of department isolation.
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 concept of meritocracy
could be read as an explanation
or as a justification of why a division of labor 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.
Limitations
Adam
Smith famously said in The
Wealth of Nations that the division of labor is limited by
the extent of the market. This is because it is by exchange that each
person can be specialized in their work and yet still have access to
a wide range of goods and services. Hence, reductions in barriers to
exchange lead to increases in the division of labor and so help to
drive economic growth. Limitations to the division of labor have also
been related to coordination and transportation costs.
There can be
motivational advantages to a reduced division of labor (which has
been termed ‘job
enlargement’ and 'job
enrichment').
Jobs that are too specialized in a narrow range of tasks are said to
result in demotivation due to boredom and alienation. Hence, a
Taylorist
approach to work design contributed to worsened industrial relations.
There are also limitations to the division of labor (and the division
of work) that result from work-flow variations and
uncertainties.
These help to explain issues in modern work organization, such as
task consolidations in business
process re-engineering and the use of multi-skilled work teams.
For instance, one stage of a production process may temporarily work
at a slower pace, forcing other stages to slow down. One answer to
this is to make some portion of resources mobile between stages, so
that those resources must be capable of undertaking a wider range of
tasks. Another is to consolidate tasks so that they are undertaken
one after another by the same workers and other resources. Stocks
between stages can also help to reduce the problem to some extent but
are costly and can hamper quality control. Note also that modern
flexible
manufacturing systems require both flexible machines and flexible
workers.
In project-based work, the coordination of
resources is a difficult issue for the project
manager as project schedules
and resulting resource bookings are based on estimates
of task durations and so are subject to subsequent revisions. Again,
consolidating tasks so that they are undertaken consecutively by the
same resources and having resources available that can be called on
at short-notice from other tasks can help to reduce such problems,
though at the cost of reduced specialization.
There are also
advantages in a reduced division of labor where knowledge would
otherwise have to be transferred between stages.
For example, having a single person deal with a customer query means
that only that one person has to be familiarized with the customer’s
details. It is also likely to result in the query being handled
faster due to the elimination of delays in passing the query between
different people.
Gendered division of labor
The clearest exposition
of the principles of sexual division of labor across the full range
of human societies can be summarized 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. "Entailment Theory and Method: A 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.
Industrial organizational psychology
Job satisfaction has been shown to improve as an employee is given
the task of a specific job. Students who have received PhDs in a
chosen field later report increased satisfaction compared to their
previous jobs. This can be attributed to their high levels of
specialization.
The higher the training needed for the specialized job position, the
higher is the level of job satisfaction as well, although many highly
specialized jobs can be monotonous and produce high rates of burn out
periodically.
