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Division of labour in organizational and industrial settings

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Main article: Division of labour for other applications

Division of labour or division of labor is the specialisation of cooperative labour 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 industrialisation processes. Later, the division of labour reached the level of a scientifically-based management practice with the time and motion studies associated with Taylorism.

For specialisation to be productive, it requires:

Philosophical point of viewEdit


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, writing in the fourth century BC makes a passing reference to division of labour in his 'Cyropaedia' (aka Education of Cyrus).


William PettyEdit



Bernard de MandevilleEdit

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:


David HumeEdit

David Hume talks about "partition of employments" in "A Treatise of Human Nature" (1739):


Henri Louis Duhamel du MonceauEdit

In his additions to l’”Art de l’Épinglier”[1] - The Art of the Pin-Maker - (1761), Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau writes about the "division of labour"[2]:

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 labour. [...] The first operation is to have brass go through the drawing plate to calibrate it. [...]

Adam SmithEdit

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 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 specialisation 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. The contradiction has led to some debate over Smith's opinion of the division of labour.


Smith saw the importance of matching skills with equipment - usually in the context of an organisation. For example, pin makers were organised with one making the head, another the body, each using different equipment. Similarly he emphasised that 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 organisation. See also a short discussion of Adam Smith's theory in the context of business processes.

Karl Marx Edit

Increasing specialisation 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 specialised 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 imagined 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.

Émile DurkheimEdit

Émile Durkheim wrote about a fractionated, unequal world by dividing it along the lines of "human solidarity," its essential moral value is division of labour. In 1893 he published "The Division of Labour 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.

Ludwig von MisesEdit

On the other hand, Marx's theories, including the negative claims regarding the division of labour have been criticised 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.


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 specialisation cannot be explained very well in terms of "the work nations do best", rather this specialisation 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 debatesEdit

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.

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 Western concept of meritocracy could be read as an explanation or as a justification of why a division of labour 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 (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 the value of your outputs exceed the value of your inputs.

Global division of labourEdit

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,

  • 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 & 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.

Types of SpecializationEdit

Geographical Specialisation: land use is naturally suited to specific situation.

Labour Specialisation: achieved when the population process is broken into tiny tasks. The idea is referred to as the division of labour.


  1. More efficient in terms of time.
  2. Reduces the time needed for training because the task is simplified.
  3. Increases productivity because training time is reduced and the worker is productive in a short amount of time.
  4. Concentration on one repetitive task makes workers more skilled at performing that task.
  5. Little time is spent moving between tasks so overall time wasted is reduced.
  6. The overall quality of the product will increase bringing welfare gains to the consumer


  1. Lack of motivation: the quality of labour decreases while absenteeism may rise.
  2. Growing dependency: a break in production may cause problems to the entire process.
  3. Loss of flexibility: workers have limited knowledge while not many jobs opportunities are available.
  4. Higher start-up costs: high initial costs necessary to buy the specialist machinery lead to a higher break-even point.

See alsoEdit


  1. R. Réaumur and A. de Ferchault. Art de l'Épinglier avec des additions de M. Duhamel du Monceau et des remarques extraites des mémoires de M. Perronet, inspecteur général des Ponts et Chaussées. Paris, Saillant et Nyon, 1761.
  2. Scan of the text of l'"Art de l'Épinglier", with the expression "division de ce travail".

Further readingEdit

  • Ali Rattansi, Marx and the Division of Labour.
  • Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society.
  • Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital; The Degradation of Labor in the 20th Century
  • André Gorz, The Division of Labour: The Labour Process and Class Struggle in Modern Capitalism.
  • Bertell Ollman, Sexual and social revolution.
  • Murray Rothbard, Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism and the Division of Labor [1]
  • Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert T. Boyd and Ernst Fehr, Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life.
  • F. Froebel, F., J. Heinrichs and O. Krey, The New International Division of Labour. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • James Heartfield, "The Economy of Time" [2]
  • Richard Florida, The rise of the creative class.
  • Richard Florida, The flight of the creative class.
  • Deon Filmer, Estimating the World at Work, a background report for World Bank's World Development Report 1995 (Washington DC, 1995).

External linksEdit


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