Division of labour

Tareq al-Suwaidan presents division of labour as the principle with which the West opened modern management science, drawn from Adam Smith's pin-factory story ¹.

He recounts that Smith watched the workers of a pin factory, each performing every stage, then rearranged the work so that each worker had a single step, and output rose tenfold without changing the workers, machines or materials ^{2 3}. He calls division of labour a great theory in the world of industry, but one that dealt mankind a severe blow when it was carried into the world of services, where an applicant is stalled between one clerk and the next ^{1 4}.

He says humanity treated this flaw with 'administrative reengineering' (reengineering, arabised as hindara), which redistributes work by process rather than by division of labour, producing the 'complete employee' who finishes a whole transaction ^{5 6}. He advises anyone working in services, government or companies, not to use division of labour and to rely on the complete employee instead, who is better and faster ⁷.