Division of labour

Without the factors of production, companies cannot get started. To be successful, however, they need to make good use of those resources. To make best use of labour, you need to organise it. The division of labour is one way to achieve this.

Let's take making shirts as an example. What do you need to do to make a shirt? You need to design it, find the right material, cut the material, sew the pieces together, dye the shirt and sew on the buttons. One person working on their own could probably do all these tasks. This is one way to organise labour. Another way is for a number of workers to share the job. Each worker is responsible for one task in the process. This is an example of the division of labour.

The division of labour isn't a new idea. Even very early societies had some form of labour specialisation. For example, in some societies men were hunters and gatherers of food, while women were responsible for child rearing. However, as societies became industrialised, the division of labour increased. Factories became the main means of production, and each factory worker became responsible for smaller and smaller stages in the process.

As each worker gets more and more experience at doing their particular task, they get better and better at it. This should improve the quality of their work. With smaller tasks to do, workers can do things automatically, without thinking about them. This will speed up their productivity, and speed up the whole production process. Finally, small tasks are easier to learn. As the division of labour increases, the amount of time needed to train each worker decreases. All of this means a more efficient and productive workforce ... at least, in theory.

There is, however, a human factor to consider. Workers are not machines. Their physical and emotional health has an impact on their productivity. Repeating the same simple task over and over again is very boring. Bored workers can't concentrate easily, and their mistakes will reduce the quality of their output. In addition, there is the problem of ownership. Many workers take pride in their work. They don't just work for wages, but also because they get satisfaction from doing a good job or from creating something useful or beautiful. If you only add buttons to a shirt, you don't feel that the shirt is your work. You can't take pride in a job that does not need skill to do. In this situation, workers become careless and their work becomes sloppy. Overall, this has a negative impact on productivity.

Thankfully, robots and machines can now do many of the mindless tasks that factory workers used to do. Nevertheless, the theory of the division of labour is still fundamental to all modern economies.