The Disadvantages of the Division of Labour

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 395.

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Mixed Economies

We have seen that there is some use of the market mechanism in planned economies. Likewise there is some measure of state control in free market economies. Here the term mixed economy is used; it describes most of the economies in the noncommunist world. These countries are basically market economies, but all contain elements of state enterprise and governments in all of them intervene to modify the operation of market forces. They are mixtures of command and market economies.

In these mixed economies private property is an impor­tant institution. Supporters of the mixed system hold the view that private property provides an important incentive for people to work, save and invest. They oppose the aboli­tion of private property and argue that it is possible to pre­sent great inequalities of wealth from arising by the appro­priate government measures (e. g. heavy taxation of income and wealth).

The mixed economy has come into being as a result of increasing government intervention and control in capitalist countries. This development has been particularly extensive during the 20th century. There are many reasons for this increasing ability of governments.

A cycle of simple movements which is repeated every few minutes is all that is demanded of large number of work­ers in factories. This undoubtedly makes for monotony and boreom; there is no opportunity for the worker to exercise initiative, judgement, manual skills, or responsibility. Whilst there are operatives who may prefer to have daily tasks which make very limited calls upon them and who do not wish to have a job which carries any great responsibility, it must be the case that large numbers of workers do find such jobs rather frustrating.

The extension of specialisation has been accompanied by a great increase in the use of machinery which, in turn, has tended to become more and more automatic. Basic skills have been transferred from the hands of the worker to the machine. All this has led to a marked decline in the degree of craftsmanship required of the average industrial worker. The satisfaction to be derived from 'making some­thing' — the pride in creation — is denied to the machine minder.

Specialisation means that workers do not have the wide industrial training which would make them adaptable to changes in the techniques of pjpduction. Their specialisa­tion functions can becomel5b'solete when new machines are invented, and their particular skills will be useless elsewhere. Such workers, it is held, are especially liable to unemploy­ment in a rapidly changing world.

In answer to this argument, it has been pointed out that the division of labour, by simplifying tasks, makes job in one industry very similar to those in another. Since the operation is easy to learn, retraining is easily and quickly accom­plished and workers can, without great difficulty, move from one job to another.

A specialised system of production increases the extent to which different sectors of the economy depend upon one another. It is not simply a question of workers specialising; factories, firms, and even whole industries specialise. Many modem industries consist of a large number of firms ciu h concentrating on the production of one, or very few, com-ponents which are brought together in what is in effect a large assembly plant. This is a very efficient, low-cost method of production, but it is extremely vulnerable to a breakdown in any one of the large number of links in the chain. Defays in the supply of any one component may cause massive holds-up throughout the industry

Modern technology allied to the extensive use of the division of labour has made possible enormOUs increases in the output of goods and services. It has transformed the liv­ing standards of millions of people, removed much of the back-breaking toil from people's daily labour, made possible a great reduction in working hours, and, by providing for more leisure, has given people the opportunity to lead fuller and richer lives.

Nevertheless the loss of job satisfaction, particularly in manufacturing industries, is raising some serious social problems. In many industrial countries, managers are seri­ously considering various projects aimed at' j o b enrich- ment. These are attempts to reverse recent trends by enlarging the role and responsibility of workers. Several fac­tories have tried to abolish the assembly line by reorganizing production so that teams of workers are responsible for assembling the entire product (or a major component of it). Each team is free to decide how the various tasks, will be allocated and the speed with which the job is carried out. Within each team the jobs may be rotated so as to increase the element of variety in the work.