What is division of labour? What are its advantages? |

When we want to accomplish something, whether it be running a household, a restaurant or a manufacturing plant, all that we need to accomplish can be broken down into a series of separate tasks. When we divide those tasks so that people are performing the same tasks all the time, that is a division of labor.  There are powerful advantages to this. 

Division of labor creates expertise in each area of labor.  When people are doing the same thing over and over again, they get much better at it, as opposed to a situation in which people are doing a variety of tasks, hence the expression,"Jack of all trades, master at none."  In a traditional marriage, the division of labor was to cede all household matters to the wife and all external matters to the husband, which meant that wives became quite competent at running households, while men, left home alone, didn't seem to be up to the task. This division of labor has been substantially eroded over the years, since both males and females are expected to be responsible for everything. Thus, there has been a trade off, equality gained but a loss in the advantages of the division of labor. 

Division of labor creates great efficiency, a corollary of the expertise gained, and also, more attention paid to how tasks are set up in the first place, a means of moving a product along, for example, on an assembly line, so that as each task is completed, another can be performed by its "expert."  In a restaurant, cooking tasks are often divided, such that one person prepares salads, another desserts, and another entrees. In this situation, all can be working on their respective tasks at the same time, rather than having one person having to do all three far more slowly, costing the employer more money and time.  Even less efficient would be to have the cooks also waiting on the tables, since they are then not performing the tasks they can do the best and the most quickly. 

As the world moves away from the rural and the agricultural to the urban and industrial or post-industrial, division of labor becomes the norm, not the exception.  A farmer once did everything on the farm, from planting to milking the cows to selling produce at a roadside stand. Even farms are now "factories" run by major corporations, with clear and efficient divisions of labor on them.  The farmer who did everything could no longer make a living because of the inefficiency. I would hazard a guess that there are very few endeavors in today's world that do not involve some division of labor.  This is a shame, in a way, since there can be pleasure in knowing how to do a variety of tasks, and there are times when we really need to know how to do more than one kind of task, for example, when technology fails us.