(1301) Organizing: Work specialization

Work specialization allows organizations to efficiently use the diversity of skills that
workers have. In most organizations, some tasks require highly developed skills; others
can be performed by employees with lower skill levels. If all workers were engaged in all
the steps of, say, a manufacturing process, all would need the skills necessary to perform
both the most demanding and the least demanding jobs. Thus, except when performing the
most highly skilled or highly sophisticated tasks, employees would be working below their
skill levels. In addition, skilled workers are paid more than unskilled workers, and, because
wages tend to reflect the highest level of skill, all workers would be paid at highly skilled
rates to do easy tasks-an inefficient use of resources. This concept explains why you
rarely find a cardiac surgeon closing up a patient after surgery. Instead, doctors doing their
residencies in open-heart surgery and learning the skill usually stitch and staple the patient
after the surgeon has finished the surgery