Question

in your own words discuss:

regarding adam smiths divison of labor theory written in 1776 how is his work similar to business and managment today?

what seems intresting about it?

what does his divison of labor theory tell us about how people worked during the time he wrote it?

what would you question about his theory ?

Answer 1

"The division of labour was limited by the extent of the market" -Adam Smith

The division of labour is a concept introduced by Adam Smith. It states that if the production process is divided into different stages it enables workers to focus on specific tasks. Adam Smith found that the factories doing task specialization had greater performance. And by doing this workers can concentrate on single stages of production and thus it will increase overall efficency. When the employees concentrate on one specific work, it improve the skill of employees and within in less time they can complete the task.

Business and Management is the process of organizing, analysing and planning different types of business operations. This is the key success of every business. Business and Management make every person aware of variety of career paths.

The ultimate aim of division of labour and business and management today is the increase in productivity. Businesses and theory of division of labour is doing the same process. Both are dividing the labour process to increase productivity. Some organisations divide the labour because of the complexity of the work while others divide tasks based on geography and employee skills.

Adam Smith introduced the concept of division of labour by showing the example of a pin factory where the employees are performing different roles in the making of a pin.

Questions about this theory

If the workers are concentrated only on one specialized work this will lead to boaring and unaware of other work.

If workers lose motivation to concentrate there occurs more mistakes.

Division of labour can lead to limited employee skill, dependence on others and employee discontent.

The cos of job specialization is more, so that it limits small firms from the division of labour.

In todays world technology is making everything easier, so the chances of division of labour is decreasing.