The importance for economic growth and development of the division of work and the corresponding specialization, cannot be questioned since Adam Smith dedicates the first three chapters of the first book of his great work to emphasise its decisive influence on the progress of productive abilities of work and, therefore, on the wealth of the nations. The advantage in terms of productive efficiency throughout the whole economic system was exemplified in that industrial epoch with the manufacture of pins with progressive division of concrete tasks.

As this example became generalised in all types of goods production and services, and even widespread on an international level with the amplification and acceleration of international trade, the division of work became an imposing means of progress, with important repercussions on the aptitude, dexterity and good sense at work, including managerial work.

In a Crusonian economy, production should be in proportion with regard to human necessities and therefore, it is necessary to satisfy all in the corresponding harmoniously proportional quantities. We cannot dedicate our activity to some leaving others, maybe important, unsatisfied. Robinson could not specialise in the production of only one type of goods. He had to go to all fronts by himself.

Life in society and the possibility of exchange is a prerequisite of specialization and in turn, assuming its existence, specialization favours exchange, in quantity as well as in quality. For Adam Smith profit was the motor of production. But that profit tended to diminish because of free competition, so a new Schumpeterian stimulus for specialization and innovation appeared.

Those innovations are nothing more than new discoveries of suitabilities unknown until then such as new discoveries in work techniques, or in exploitation of capital, or in techniques of managerial organisation. Also in demand, a discovery of new aspirations or human preferences that were numbed in human intimacy and that were waiting for an external incentive to awaken them.

Given the property of resources (natural and human), assuming the possibility of exchange and considering the enormous variety of economic suitabilities in resources together with the enormous variety of end services to which their production is directed, more tendencies arise naturally in a rational being like Man. The tendency for and division of work means that, together with property and exchange, a greater discovery of capabilities, potentialities and suitabilities in resources is discovered.

The cobbler, habitually dedicating his work capability: intelligence, will and physical and intellectual effort to the same goals and on the same objects will become more and more of an expert in his materials. He will become more of an expert than the carpenter or the glassmaker and to a greater extent- in the potentialities of leather and rubber, esparto, cloth and plastic with regards to appropriate footwear for his future clients. The same occurs with the carpenter when working on wood or the glassmaker on glass.

That works in favour of the increase of productive capacity in three directions: one direction penetrating into the variety, characteristics and quality of the final services, another in the discovery of new suitabilities in resources, selecting some over others with regard to the best service, and the third direction improving the capacity, experience and yield of the selfsame specialised workers. Specialization improves service, the physical and human resources that intervene in production. The growing division of work is one of the forces of increase of wealth once it contributes to facilitate the horizontal and vertical completeness of goods and to improve human capital in the selfsame performance of its task.

The general capacity of man's dominion of nature, concentrated on a more reduced environment because of specialization, allows us to discover the causal connections and laws to which the objects that fall under our concrete professional jurisdiction are subject, accelerating processes of technological innovation and facilitating scientific and economic progress in this way.

Specialization facilitates the knowledge of the elements of the process that have a causal connection in the productive itinerary from high quality goods to the highest quality goods. The effort of regularisation of reality to make it comprehensible to the human being, and the counter-effort of adaptation of intelligence to the object on which one works, is facilitated by that reduction of the area on which the dominion is exercised.

The unequal geographical-space distribution of resources throughout the earth, and the different location of the people that work, means that the division of work allows a considerable saving of time that would be required when passing from one activity to another. This principle, simply expressed, has very broad applications on a micro-economic as well as macro-economic level.

The hurricane of specialization also has an influence on capital instruments that tend to be more and more varied and sophisticated in their space distribution. In this way, a new field of diversification of work appears according to the type of operative productive instruments. The general advantages of specialization can also be applied in that direction. The invention of suitable instruments that facilitate, improve and abbreviate the task, is strengthened by division of work since a greater aptitude is acquired to discover the most expedite methods in order to reach a goal. The worker has all his attention on a smaller sector of reality and he discovers processes and relationships that before were unknown to him.

Specialization -as well as facilitating technological innovation by accelerating the discovery of causal connections between goods - also facilitates strictly economic innovation, making the knowledge of the causal interconnections of things progress with their own well-being. Carl Menger attributed to this growing innovation, and its gradual dominion, the elevation of human societies from the state of commonness and deepest poverty to the current state of culture and well-being.

Smith also spoke of the influence of the division of work in humanistic sciences applying principles similar to those of manufacturing production. He explained their function as a specialization that joined and unified the dispersed. The activity of philosophers or speculative and reflexive works does not consist of making one thing in particular materially, but of observing them all and combining or coordinating the properties of the most disparate objects. Specialization in the sciences also imparts dexterity and it saves a lot of time; however, it also shares the danger of the loss of an integrating unit that should connect with philosophy. Each individual becomes more expert in his field and, producing more, the quantity and quality of science increases considerably; but the ignorance of the rest also increases. A widespread humanistic formation is needed, also for economists, to avoid these dangers.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Gaceta de los Negocios, Thursday December 9th 1993