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REACTION PAPER

Of the Division of Labor

Adam Smith

“The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill,
dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects
of the division of labour.”

An increase in the productivity of labor comes from the division of labor which in turn produces
specialization and automation in the long run which benefits more people and spreads opulence to the
lowest rank.

There are several advantages with the division of labor:

1) mastery in craftsmanship as you will be performing one task repetitively.

2) less time to train people as you will be teaching a few tasks thus reducing the impact of losing a
worker.
3) increase in productivity, when workers focus solely on a specific task, they can master it quicker
and more efficiently. In turn, workers become more productive.
4) allocates workers to specific jobs thus creating more jobs
5) cheaper products, as division of labor increases productivity, it also means that it’s cheaper to
produce a good. In turn, this translates to cheaper products.
6) higher wages, some productivity gains may go to profits and some go to higher pay for
employees.
7) Innovation and Automation, doing the same tasks everyday makes it easier to see the pitfalls in
the existing process and suggests areas for improvement.

Although it has significant advantages, there are also some disadvantages that needs to be considered
as well like,

1) boredom from repetition of work

2) interdependence—not knowing how the finished product was made and when one part of the
process is delayed, the production is stopped or falls apart.
 3) lack of responsibility – when each person is only a small part of a bigger chain, it can become
difficult to assign responsibility. If a task fails, it can be time-consuming to find out where things
went wrong. At the same time, it also becomes easier for certain individuals to slack.

The idea of Adam Smith’s the division of labor is more likely as what I have understood that it started in
a self-interest (or individual needs) which employs division of labor to produce more in exchange also
for something more which of value where both parties agreed upon which benefits the society. Others
would call it “cooperation” to hide self-interest as it seems to me. In this topic, “self-interest” is
introduced in a positive way in which I would agree as self-interest is a human nature.

As in my case, working as an online service provider of travel documents, we tend to work in teams
assigned to different tasks thus we employ division of labor as an organization and interconnectivity and
cooperation is highly demanded. In the agriculture side, as our family also owns a small farm, we don’t
employ division of labor. Thus, it may seem to be not applicable to all but definitely in most part, we
have benefited in the process even though the I may have been assigned in a task where I think not
suited to me (others would call this forced labor) or sometimes I get bored though but the salary I
received provided me more purchasing power and has helped provide the necessities for my family as
well as my extended family.

Whatever the end result of this, I would say this idea works for me.