Division of Labor in a Service Economy

The famous political economists Frederick Taylor and Adam Smith both write of the division of labour as the be all and end all of progress at the workplace. Though their views differ, they both exalt its efficiency and capacity to inspire workers to put out as much as they are able. But a brave journalist by the name of Barbara Ehrenreich sets out to test if this hypothesis still applies in the modern day United States by becoming one of the workers the economists spoke of. What she helps the modern world to discover is that though they may have been applicable at the time, the views of both Frederick Taylor and Adam Smith on the best way to govern the workplace are obsolete in the United States’ 21^st century economy, since in today’s service-based world there is no easy way to divide one job into multiple independent malleable units.

A pioneer of political economy, Adam Smith describes his vision of the division of labor in great deal in his book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In his view, “The division of labor, … so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labour” (p. 9). This makes much sense when considering his example of pin-making―each person working on one particle of this manufacturing process can indeed create a lot of efficiency. However, to take this suggestion and apply it universally to every labor market can seem almost foolish. Barbara Ehrenreich tells the story of working for a business she calls “Hearthside” in her book, Nickel and Dimed. She describes how after finishing her actual waitressing duties, her manager forces her to move on to tasks such as vacuum-cleaning or other similar tasks that have nothing to do with her main line of work (pp. 22-23). In fact, had the business employed extra personnel to perform these tasks, it would probably have lost more profit than gained, since the task could be performed by people who are finished with their main job. Similarly, my mother Kate once worked for a branch of an insurance company called Farmers’ Insurance, where rather than being assigned a single form to fill out for each customer or a single procedure to walk through, she got one customer’s entire program of responsibilities to herself―ensuring the customer’s house, car, helping them through their paperwork, answering questions, and even inspecting the property of that customer. Her coworkers operated similarly, and this was the most efficient way to run this service-based business, because customers would be driven away unless they had a familiar face to work with, in addition to many other aspects that make this arrangement optimal. Thus, Smith’s view on the magnificence of the division of labor may apply to factory-style jobs, but certainly not a large proportion of service-based labor.

Like Smith, Frederick Taylor heavily promoted the division of labor, but he went beyond Smith to say that not only should the labor be divided, but precisely spelled out for the worker in minute detail days in advance. In his article called Scientific Management, Taylor writes that “The work of every workman is fully planned out by the management at least one day in advance, and each man receives in most cases complete written instructions, describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish, as well as the means to be used in doing the work” (p. 72). From the previous examples applied to Smith, this may seem as easily dismissible when applied to service-based labor, but Ehrenreich demonstrates that businesses have indeed attempted to do so, as she works for a firm called the “Merry Maids.” To introduce her to the trade, she is asked to watch a series of videos. While watching a particular one about Dusting, her manager tells her, “You know, all this was figured out with a stopwatch” (p. 74). Throughout this chapter, however, Ehrenreich finds out that it’s not at all possible to work methodically as the videos suggest. In fact, she has to skip some parts, swap others with coworkers, and overall use a great deal of cooperation to get the job done. This is counter to Taylor, who not once mentions the advantage of inter-worker cooperation on the workplace. Even this one example opens the door to a vast array of trades where Taylorism, the scientific management of absolute efficiency at the workplace that Taylor promotes, is impossible to practically implement, especially in jobs that are service-based.

In conclusion, both Smith’s theory of the division of labor to make increasing efficiency easy for the workers, and Taylor’s theory of scientific management to force workers to increase efficiency are highly effective in the industrial world where each piece of the labor puzzle is independent of the other until the final product is finally produced. In the modern context, however, neither of these two theories are the most efficient solution any longer, because the major economic production has shifted away from manufacturing and into services, the labor processes within which are very difficult to divide up into individual, independent tasks. Though this conclusion may make sense to the reader, the problem of the incongruence continues to be very present and sometimes even counterproductive, when managers out of traditional favorability for these theories, try to force them into their own businesses. Scientific management of customer service type jobs may increase efficiency in the short run, but eventually the customers will become dissatisfied with the process, whether because they are being rushed, or not receiving sufficient attention. Therefore, the question remains of how to convince modern employers to seek alternative management techniques that maximize both their efficiency, and their consumer favor. It is time to move on from Taylorism and into the service world of today.