division of labor


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division of labor

The division of production into separate processes each of which is performed by different people. Under the division of labor, work becomes more and more specialized, and this allows a higher level of skill to develop.
Dictionary of Unfamiliar Words by Diagram Group Copyright © 2008 by Diagram Visual Information Limited
References in classic literature ?
The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme -- a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection -- to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves for it; and for these oversights successive generations have to pay.
This hamper holds a great deal; we must have a division of labor. Your division shall be laying the tablecloth.
He who created the Hindoos, who are preserved by Vishnu and destroyed by Siva -- a rather neater division of labor than is found among the deities of some other nations.
It was not all Paradise by any means, but everyone was better for the division of labor system.
(5) The final and most complex issue to consider here concerns Marx's evaluation of the working class's position in the existing division of labor. It is closely connected with his views on the post-revolutionary "political form,' with major implications for the development of class consciousness and for the articulation of socialist political strategies.
The persistence of the sexual division of labor, she demonstrates, does not necessarily reflect the short-term economic interests of management.
As an astute observer of scientific developments, Marx (1977) noted that the development of science (say, advent of stream power based on an accurate investigation of the law of friction), facilitating larger scale production in the advanced countries, never faced skill labor gaps constraints because of the prior existence of division of labor in these economies.
The material is organized into sections covering gender, power and labor; farming and wage earning; the division of labor and power structure; and organizing the rural community.
The state Division of Labor Relations found probable cause to believe that the Worcester Police Department retaliated against the president of the union representing its patrolmen.
An ant colony is often viewed as the prototypical insect society, notable for its unique and efficient division of labor. In this lengthy treatise, costa, a professor of biology at Western Carolina University, explains how the idea of eusocial behavior (what occurs in most ant colonies) has dominated entomology and how it has led to the neglect of noneusocial insect societies.
Existing law requires that an employee in the computer software field be exempt from the requirement that an overtime rate of compensation be paid if the job entails primarily high-level functions and the worker is paid the hourly rate set each year by the California Division of Labor Statistics based on California Consumer Price Index data.

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