|
Division of labor is the specialization of cooperative labor in specific, circumscribed tasks and roles, intended to increase efficiency of output. Historically the growth of a more and more complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialization processes. Later, the division of labour reached the level of a scientifically-based management practice with the time and motion studies associated with Taylorism. In the history of the human species, the first division of labour was between men and women, but it became ever more sophisticated since the invention of agriculture and the dawn of civilization. Some other social animals also exhibit a division of labour. The clearest exposition of the principles of sexual division of labour 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. 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 extentat 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. Commentaries on the division of labor are provided below. Plato In Plato's Republic we are instructed that the origin of the state lies in that "natural" inequality of humanity that 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' or 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." (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. 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 follow’d by every one of the Five. 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 original example was the making of pins. Unlike Plato, Smith did not regard the division of labour as a consequence of human inequality but 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 specialization 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. This contradiction has led to some debate over Smith's opinion of the division of labour. The specialization 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. Worker skill is the chief source of productivity gain in Smith's thinking. In modern economic theory, that role has been taken over by overall technological progress and the concept of human capital. Karl Marx Increasing specialization 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 specialized 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 was 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. However, time use surveys suggest that commercially performed labour always depends on, and goes together with, the performance of a very large amount of voluntary labour. To the extent that state subsidies are cut and privatisation increases, more work often devolves on people who must do that work without pay. In Marx's 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. Durkheim Émile Durkheim wrote about a fractionated, unequal world by divining it along the lines of "human solidarity," its essential moral value is division of labour. In 1893 he published "The Division of Labor 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 1600s 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. 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 that the gains accruing from the division of labour by far outweigh the costs; that it is fully possible to achieve balanced human development within capitalism, and that alienation is more a romantic fiction. After all, work is not all there is; there is also leisure time. Globalization 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 best. Critics however allege that international specialization cannot be explained very well 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 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. Labour hierarchy is to a great extent inevitable, simply because no one can do all tasks at once; but of course the way these hierarchies are structured can be influenced by a variety of different factors. The question to ask is what the hierarchy is a hierarchy of. An important Western concept in this regard is the concept of meritocracy, which could alternately be read as an explanation or as a justification of why a division of labour is the way it is. But it is often agreed that the most equitable principle in allocating people within hierarchies is that of true (or proven) competency or ability. US 2002 estimates for the division of labour Statistics may help to reveal some of the dimensions of the division of labour. This example concerns the USA. First, we can derive the basic employment categories in the USA in 2002 in approximate figures from BLS data, as follows (working our way down from the total population): We can then look at the proportions of what the total American population actually did in 2002, in approximate figures and broad categories: Finally, we can look at the occupational structure of the employed labour force (including salaried and self-employed) in the USA in 2002, in broad categories, as follows: These 2002 figures are just intended to provide a modest indication or illustration; of course, the way the division of labour is viewed depends greatly on the identification, classification and aggregation principles applied. A portion of migrant labour typically fails to be captured in the data. Normally, statisticians focus on the main occupational activity or employment status of members of the population; but of course individuals may also divide their time between different activities which are still not adequately captured in survey data. Consequently, it is always important in making generalisations about the division of labour to be very clear about the assumptions being made about how people differ and what they have in common. The 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 data on request for those game 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, 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. See also | |||||||
|
| ||||||||
 |
|
| |