Hierarchies In The Workplace

When an organization grows beyond the smallest operation, management divides work vertically, as those at the top delegate more of their work to those below them. The vertical hierarchy establishes what decisions people at each level can make. Centralization is when those at the top make most decisions,

Books one and two mainly focus on the evolution of the division of labor idea and

Initially, Smith proposes the idea of division of labour in the workplace. Division of labour is the separation of tasks to its rawest form, broken into specializations. He believes that this is the key to increase productivity and used the pin factory example to prove it.

In a nut shell, Price claimed the Industrial Revolution created the division of labor (2004). The Division of Labor is perfectly encapsulated by the Henry Ford model of the assembly line (Price, 2004). Each worker on the assembly line only needs to know how to attach or inspect the operation of their assigned part on to the object as a whole, and not how to assemble the entire product. This allows for any unskilled person to be taught how to attach their doodad onto the doohickey without knowing what the doohickey does or operates. This is capitalism in the basic form of the ideal. Capitalism desires economic efficiency, thus the assembly line is a perfect example of the rise of unskilled factory workers and the decline of skilled craftsmen during the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism.

According to Bateman and Snell, “Two fundamental concepts around which organizations are structured are differentiation and integration” (2011, pg. 227). Differentiation refers to the different units that work on different kinds of tasks with the use of different skills and work methods in an organization. These differentiated units are combinedand coordinated into an overallproduct for the purpose of achieving the organization’s mission as the result of integration. The two fundamental concepts indicate how the organization

Organizational structure is the framework around which the organization is organized, the underpinnings, which keep the coalition functioning. It 's the operating manual that tells members how the organization is put together and how it works. More specifically, structure describes how members are accepted, how leadership is chosen, and how decisions are made (Nagy, 2014). With lives in their hands, hospitals have to function very precisely, executing high-quality services every hour of every day. Organizations that have this sort of requirement usually take on a vertical organizational structure (Feigenbaum, 2015). This type of structure has many layers of management, with most of the organization 's staff working in very specific, narrow, low-authority roles. The numerous layers of management are designed to make sure that no one person can throw the system off too much. This structure also ensures that tasks are being done exactly and correctly (Feigenbaum, 2015).

The old economy that developed during the Industrial Revolution represented a working system that was based on unionized labor, mass production, and labor that was divided by gender. Frederick Winslow Taylor introduced a different way to manage in order to increase productivity. “He advocated the benefits of redesigning work to wrest control from workers and place it in the hands of management” (Sweet, 10).

This allows the structure of the organization to flow freely, and allowing the necessary work to be handled by the proper people. Structure allows to have different specializations in organizations allowing people to deal with issues that have a concentrated study in. Shape of an organization allows the control of the structure and develop a hierarchy. The hierarchy allows the distribution of power in an organization. Law enforcement agencies are known for their departmentalization due to having different departments focused on a multitude of different things (Five Star Model, 2005).

In order to increase productivity of the fast changing economy, the Industrial Revolution presented new organizational strategies. Small parts of a much larger manufacturing development, known as outwork system were carried out in many individual homes. The outwork system was essential, especially for making footwear. The major step-forward was under the factory system. This system allowed work to be performed on a large scale in a single centralized location. A group of businessmen, Boston Associates would recruit a large number of New England farm girls to operate the machines in their new factories.

Factory production transformed the traditional rhythm of the labor force, which came from agricultural/craft backgrounds. Thus two interlinked aspects of work experience transformed were the notion of time and the idea of work discipline. E.P. Thompson explains this was because changes in manufacture now demanded greater synchronization of labor and greater exactitude in time routines, simply because time was money in the new wage economy. The last important change that came from the Industrial revolution can be seen in work specialization. More and more workers performed more minuet and tedious tasks that consequently led to better efficiency for the factory. Unfortunately though the specialization that led to greater efficiency only allowed for an inadequate sense of accomplishment for the workers. This was because the worker would repeat a task day after day, week after week therefore they felt as if they were inconsequential to the greater picture at hand. Specialization of work, the new discipline, rigorous time schedules and low wages all contributed to a feeling of alienation for the worker, from his work and employer.4

Adam Smith’s division of labor aligns with his beliefs on international trade, he believes that the division of labor leads to great improvements in the productive power of labor. This results in more products being produced with the same amount of labor. For example, an “increase in the quantity of work which the same number of people are capable of performing”. Adam Smith’s invisible hand idea persuade workers in each country to follow the rules of absolute advantage, free markets force and supply and demand allow for this to work.

Factory workers were now able to enjoy more leisure time as their role in production was remodeled to simply oversee the process performed by machinery. Surely, this newfound freedom would expectedly be geared toward the bettering of communal affairs that could individually benefit each citizen. Smith’s vision of division of labor as “the grand principle of manufacturing improvement” was from this moment directly supplanted by the “vast automaton…acting in uninterrupted concert for the production of a common object,” (Ure 13,12). Recurring patterns can be observed despite the dynamic nature of society. The scene of factory production accurately represents the community of private individuals independently working to maintain stability for personal gain; the specialized efforts of factory workers as well as the distinctive parts of machinery are all subjected to an all-inclusive moving force much like “the selfish motives of men are transmuted by interaction to yield …social

With the power of wealth and concentration of industry, the tremendous development in machinery, and power to drive machinery; with the improvement of the tools of labor, so that they are wonderfully tremendous machines, and with these all on the one hand; with labor, the workers, performing a given part of the whole product, probably an infinitesimal part, doing the thing a thousand or thousands of times over and over again in a day-labor divided and subdivided and specialized, so that a working man is but a mere cog in the great industrial modern plant; his individuality lost, alienated from the tools of labor; with concentration of wealth, concentration of industry, I wonder whether any of us can

“The 18th century saw the emergence of the ‘Industrial Revolution’, the great age of steam, canals and factories that changed the face of the British economy forever.” (White, M, The Industrial Revolution). The industrial revolution sparked the development of capitalist economies and as a consequence a division of labour was formed. Therefore the capitalist system is seen as a natural consequence of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution was a period in which societies became industrial due to there being an increase in new manufacturing processes which transitioned from hand production methods to the development of machines and the rise of the factory system. The process of industrialisation largely affected the division of

When work is divided into departments it leads to specialization. Because due to this division people in that very department repeatedly perform their assign works and become specialist on those works and activities.