The Division of Knowledge Work

Most managers and owners of manufacturing plants and labor driven workforces might be familiar with the principles discussed in the ‘division of labour’ chapter of Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations.’ Just to remind ourselves, it reads a little something like this:

1. A pin maker, unknowing of the concepts of division of labour can very best make one pin per day by themselves.

2. Dividing the labor of making a pin involves a system where:

“One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head. To make the head requires two or three distinct operations… etc etc etc.”

3. “In some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them.”

4. Employing this division of labour, a team of 10 pin makers can make up to 4800 pins per day.

Now let’s take this concept and bring it into our modern industry, where each of us is applying our knowledge to perform our job and this knowledge is exploited to produce wealth for our given nation. Should we divide our knowledge based work? Should we be fearful of knowledge workers from lower cost countries taking our jobs? Or do we learn to adapt and become orchestrators of low-cost (but still good quality) knowledge? Let’s think about it.

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