Specialisation and the division of labour

Overview

Recall questions on the division of labour and specialisation and how they differ, why dividing labour raises output and cuts training costs, its motivational drawback, vulnerability to absence, job rotation, the effect on quality, benefits to consumers, and the scale of output it needs.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is meant by the division of labour?

   Model answer

   Breaking a production process into separate tasks so that each worker performs one part of it repeatedly.

2. 2

   What is meant by specialisation in a business?

   Model answer

   Concentrating a worker, a department or a whole firm on the narrow range of activities it performs best.

3. 3

   Distinguish between specialisation and the division of labour.

   Model answer

   Specialisation is concentrating on what one does best at any level from a single worker to a whole country, while the division of labour is the specific practice of splitting one process into separate tasks among workers.

4. 4

   Why does the division of labour raise output per worker?

   Model answer

   Repeating one task builds speed and skill, less time is lost moving between tasks and tools, and training for a single operation is short.

5. 5

   Give two reasons a business introduces the division of labour.

   Model answer

   To raise productivity and lower unit costs, and to make training quicker and cheaper because each worker learns only one task.

6. 6

   Why does the division of labour reduce training costs?

   Model answer

   A worker only has to master one narrow operation rather than the whole process, so training is short and can be given on the job.

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