Encyclopedia of Sociology

DIVISION OF LABOR

transnational corporations that draw raw resourc-
es and labor from the developing nations, and
management from the developed nations.

Labor is also organized hierarchically, into
levels of authority. Max Weber was one of the first
sociologists to analyze the emergence of modern
bureaucracies, where the division of labor is fun-
damental. Weber’s approach suggests a maximum
possible level of specialization, so that each posi-
tion can be filled by individuals who are experts in
a narrow area of activity. An extreme form of the
bureaucratic division of labor was advocated by
Frederick Taylor’s theory of ‘‘Scientific Manage-
ment’’ (1911). By studying in minute detail the
physical motions required to most efficiently oper-
ate any given piece of machinery, Taylor pio-
neered ‘‘time and motion studies.’’ Along with
Henry Ford, he also made the assembly line a
standard industrial mode of production in mod-
ern society. However, this form of the division of
labor can lead to isolation and alienation among
workers, and so more recent organizational strate-
gies, in some industrial sectors, emphasize the
‘‘craft’’ approach, in which a team of workers
participate more or less equally in many aspects
of the production process (see Blauner 1964;
Hedley 1992).

SOCIETAL DIVISION OF LABOR

Macrosociologists measure the societal division of
labor in a number of ways, most commonly by
considering the number of different occupational
categories that appear in census statistics or other
official documents (see Moore 1968). These lists
are often implicitly or explicitly ranked, and so
both horizontal and vertical division of labor can
be analyzed. This occupational heterogeneity is
dependent in part on the official definitions, but
researchers on occupational prestige (the vertical
dimension) have shown comparable levels in in-
dustrialized societies such as the United States,
Canada, England, Japan, Sweden, Germany, and
France (see Treiman 1977). The ‘‘world system’’ as
described by Wallerstein (1979) is the upper limit
of the analysis of the division of labor. Entire
societies are characterized as ‘‘core’’ or ‘‘periph-
ery’’ in Wallerstein’s analysis of the global implica-
tions of postindustrialism.

THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776),

produced the classic statement of the economic

efficiencies of a complex division of labor. He

observed that the manufacture of steel pins could

be more than two hundred times more productive

if each separate operation (and there were more

than a dozen) were performed by a separate work-

er. The emergence of the systematic and intention-

al division of labor probably goes back to prehis-

toric societies, and is certainly in evidence in the

ancient civilizations of China, Egypt, Greece, and

Rome. The accumulation of an agricultural sur-

plus and the establishment of markets both creat-

ed and stimulated the differentiation of producers

and consumers. Another phase in the transforma-

tion in Europe was the decline of the ‘‘craft guilds’’

that dominated from the twelfth to the sixteenth

centuries. When labor became free from the

constraints of the journeyman/apprentice system

and when factories began to attract large numbers

of laborers, the mechanization of modern work

flourished. (For economic and political perspec-

tives on the division of labor see Krause 1982;

Putterman 1990).

Early sociologists such as Herbert Spencer

considered the growth of societies as the primary

determinant of the increased specialization and

routinization of work; they also emphasized the

positive impacts of this process. Spencer, like oth-

er functionalists, viewed human society as an or-

ganic system that became increasingly differentiat-

ed as it grew in size, much as a fertilized egg

develops complex structures as it develops into a

full-fledged embryo. In his Principles of Sociology

(1884), Spencer considered the evolution of hu-

man society as a process of increasing differentia-

tion of structure and function.

Karl Marx(1867) argued that the increasing

division of labor in capitalist societies is a primary

cause of alienation and class conflict, and there-

fore is a force in the eventual transformation to a

socialist/communist society. In fact, a specific ques-

tion asking for details of the division of labor

appeared on one of the earliest questionnaire

surveys in sociology done by Marx in 1880. Marx

and his followers called for a new form of the

division of labor, supported by an equalitarian

ethos, in which individuals would be free to choose