Division of labor is an economic concept that states that dividing the production process into different stages allows workers to specialize in specific tasks, with each task being performed by a separate person or group of people.
If workers can concentrate on a small aspect of production, this increases overall efficiency, provided enough has been produced. It is most often applied to mass production systems and is one of the basic principles of organizing an assembly line.
Breaking down work into simple repetitive tasks eliminates unnecessary movement and limits the handling of different tools and parts. Reduced production time and the ability to replace craftsmen with unskilled workers at lower wages results in lower production costs and a less expensive end product.
Daily production has become so technical and complex that different workers are assigned to different tasks according to their abilities and skill. Different workers perform different parts of production according to their specialization.
The result is that products reach their final form with the cooperation of many workers. For example, in a factory for garments made on a large scale, one person does the cutting of the fabric, the second person sews the clothes by machine, the third attaches the buttons, the fourth folds, and packs, etc.
This way of doing work is called division of labor because different workers are engaged in performing different parts of production.
The concept of division of labor was popularized in 1776 by the Scottish economist Adam Smith in his book The Wealth of Nations.
He used the famous example of a pin factory. Adam Smith observed how the efficiency of production was greatly increased because the workers were divided and assigned different roles.
He saw this division of labor as the key to economic growth by providing a cheaper and more efficient means of producing goods.
According to Smith, economic growth is rooted in the division of labor. This idea relates primarily to the specialization of the labor force, essentially the disintegration of large jobs into many small components.
The fact that workers do not have to change tasks during the day saves time and money. This is exactly what allowed factories to grow throughout the 19th century.
Problems of the division of labor
Surprisingly, Smith recognized the potential problems of this development. He pointed out that forcing people to perform simple, repetitive tasks led to an ignorant and unsatisfied workforce.
For this reason, he formulated the revolutionary belief that governments had an obligation to provide education for workers.
Sociological sense
The French scholar Émile Durkheim first used the phrase division of labor in a sociological sense in his discussion of social evolution.
Rather than seeing the division of labor as a result of the desire for material abundance, Durkheim asserted that specialization arose from changes in social structure caused by a supposed natural increase in population size and density and an increase in competition for survival.
What does it mean?
A very basic example of the division of labor could be seen in food gathering. In early societies, the men were the hunters and the women and children prepared the food and picked the berries.
It was a very simple division of labor to allow the best use of different skill sets.
Today there is an even greater division of labor in food production. Farmers buy seeds, fertilizer, and tractors from different companies. They only concentrate on one aspect of food production.
Forms of the division of labor
Occupational or simple
This is the division of people in society according to their occupations. Each individual takes a particular type of occupation for which he is best suited. Thus, in a community some are teachers, others are doctors, and others are merchants or agents.
When all the work of a particular production is done by the same worker, it is called a simple division of labor.
In processes or complex division of labor
When all the work in production is divided into different processes and each process is assigned to different people, it is called process specialization.
There are divisions and each division is performed by one person. This implicit division of labor is called a complex division of labor. Modern mass production is based on it.
For example, the manufacture of shoes in a modern factory involves a complex division of labor. The upper part of the shoe is prepared by one group of workers, the bottom part is prepared by another group, the stitching by a third group, and the polishing or finishing by the fourth group of workers.
Success factors of the division of labor
A large market and large-scale production
A large market requires large-scale production; hence, a greater possibility of a division of labor.
A complex division of labor and a large scale of production are only possible when there is a market large enough to absorb the entire supply of goods produced.
Division of labor is found mainly in large factories, where commodities are produced on a large scale; only then will it be possible to divide labor into different processes and assign the procedure to a different set of workers.
Nature of the industry and of the product
Some industries are of such a nature that it is not possible to divide labor into distinct and separate processes. The scope for division of labor is limited.
The nature of the product imposes another limitation: if the product is such that its manufacture cannot be divided into different processes, no division of labor is possible.
Organizational capacity
Division of labor involves the employment of a large number of workers in a factory. To manage them properly and assign to each worker a suitable job requires a high-level judgment of human nature.
Spirit of cooperation
Division of labor is successful when there is perfect coordination between the different processes and full cooperation among the workers. Without the spirit of cooperation and commitment, division of labor cannot be effective.
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