Division of labour or specialisation is where a
sophisticated/ complicated task is divided into many smaller parts each done by
a small group of workers or individually
Where do we see the division of labour?
In fact it is too common and everywhere. In case if
you don’t realise, look around you or even consider yourself as an example. In
a car factory, we have people like the design engineers, assemblers,
technicians who test-drive the cars, marketing personnels and many more. In a
restaurant, there are chefs, cashier, waiters and waitresses. In the education
industry, we have subject specialists, administrative staffs, manager of the
A-Level department, counsellors and others. At individual level, we do specialise.
If you represent your school for a badminton competition, then you are said to
be specialising in that sport. If you can play a guitar of all the musical instruments
out there, then perhaps you are a guitar specialist
Why is division of labour important?
For many obvious reasons:
1. When a worker is performing the same task
repetitively, he or she becomes good at it. Over the time, it becomes so easy
to the extent where effort and thinking are no longer required. It is just so
automatic. This is the benefit to a factory worker. In some other professions
such as property sales consultant, mortgage loan officers and insurance agents,
being more skilled means greater income since they can easily seal more deals
2. Having more skilled workers is also good for a factory
or firm. Since the workers are so efficient, it can actually refrain itself
from hiring as many workers as before. In other words, wage costs will fall
because a firm now hires fewer employees
3. Revenue and perhaps profit will increase. A skilled
worker will reduce customer complaints, reduce their waiting time and improve
their welfare. This will keep them coming back. An experienced hair stylist
will be able to serve more customers in two hours than a less skilled one. Equally,
an experienced chef is very important because lunch and dinner are the best
time to increase sales due to high traffics. If customers are told to wait very
long for their food to be served, the restaurant stands to lose the additional total
revenue that could have been generated. On top of that, dissatisfied customers
will unlikely return which may affect its business position in the long term
4. Without specialisation, a factory will have to buy
equipments for all the workers so that they can perform their job. However,
this is not without problems. First, it is not possible to equip each employee
with machine to work with as this will be very ridiculously expensive. Second,
there is an issue of limited space within an office or factory. After
specialisation, the usage of machineries is more cost-feasible as only a small
group people will be assigned to it. This will increase the overall level of
productivity boosts by division of labour and usage of tools
5. Production process becomes possible with
specialisation. As an example, consider the production of aircrafts and
container ships. Without specialisation, a person will have to master the art of
production from A to Z and considering that aircrafts are so complicated, he or
she is going to use the entire lifetime just to learn how to manufacture it. By
then, maybe 20 years have passed and nothing is produced. This also indicates
that demand cannot be met. The same goes for lecturing. If I was told to teach
Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Economics, maybe after 5 years I’m
still learning it. A college will not be able to function that way. Upon
division of labour, a person just has to master the discipline he is allocated
to. Operation becomes possible
6. Jobs can be created from the division of labour. Instead
of performing all the tasks on a solo basis, now there will be different people
doing different thing within the factory or office. More jobs are created which
can be beneficial to the national economy
Specialisation is not without problems:
1. If a task is too simple and repetitive, then workers
may find it boring. It will not be long before the productivity falls. This is
a problem because once workers begin to take less pride in their work, quality
may suffer, absenteeism may increase and some will be less punctual to their
workplace
2. The second disadvantage is related to the first. Once
they reach the point where they find themselves learning nothing, they will
most likely call it a quit. Highest labour turnover is found in retailing,
hotels, catering and leisure, call centres and other lower paid private sector
services jobs. The problem that has been created is, firms have to consistently
waste money to advertise and time to train new ones
3. Specialisation creates over dependency. If one part of
the production process is affected, perhaps the whole assembly line could grind
to a halt. As an example, when there was a tsunami in Japan and flood in
Thailand in the recent years, production of Honda and Toyota cars in other
parts of the world was affected simply because the production plant is
temporarily shut and so there were no spare parts manufactured
Does division of labour necessarily lead to boredom?
This question has both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ as an answer.
Jobs that are routine, simple and that can be done by anyone can easily lead to
boredom
However, being an Economics lecturer can be quite fun.
I get to interact with different people every day and see different students
almost every term. The subject itself is so broad that in fact I am still
learning new things from the world as well as students despite having ‘mastered’
the subject. Each day, there will be new case studies and different scenarios
which require unique approach to deal with and many more. In a nutshell, my
profession is quite sophisticated and learning is dynamic rather than static.
Personally, I find it thrilling than say, being a cashier
How does the division of labour create more
efficiency?
1. Mastering one small part is way easier than the whole
complicated process
2. Workers no longer need to move around. By staying put
in one place, more works can be done.
3. Consider a chef who no longer needs to simultaneously assume
the role of a waiter
4. People get to choose the discipline that they are
passionate in rather than being told to perform tasks that they dislike. As
long as they are interested, they will be more passionate and naturally become
good at it
I will talk about international division of labour in
another post
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