Division Of Labor In Adam Smith's Wealth Of Nations

In Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith explained his very own concept of the economic success of a civilized nation. Smith believed that the best way a nation could accumulate wealth is through the division of labor. If everyone specialized in a certain occupation, then, together, they can increase production, resulting in economic growth, which is what every nation should try to attain. Smith used examples, such as the pin example, to help validate the effectiveness of the division of labor: “Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day...But if they had wrought separately and independently, and without...having been educated to this particular business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty…”(162). The division of labor has its benefits and costs, but overall, if utilized on a larger scale (such as a country specializing in corn trading with a country specializing in cotton), it deems itself very useful. The benefits of the division of labor include: innovation, gained skill, and saving time. Through repetition, a worker increases his/her skill required to perform his/her job. At the same time, the worker …show more content…
A person who only focuses on doing one task, limits his/her knowledge. (S)he does not know anything outside of that specific job; so, what if his/her choice of occupation is no longer in demand? The former worker would be out of a job, because (s)he only focused on one task. Repetition helps with the improvement of skill; however, the worker can become bored or dissatisfied with doing his/her job over and over again. This may affect the worker’s production process, because a bored worker has no motivation to work as efficient as (s)he may have had in the past. This decreases productivity in the production process, which does not lead to any type of growth within the