7 Disadvantages of Division of Labour are listed and explicated in this article. We hope you find it informative and helpful for your research.
Disadvantages of Division of Labour
Read Also: Limitations to Division of Labour
In our article on ‘Advantages of Division of labor’, we explained in detail the good reasons why you should employ the system of division of labor into your company as it greatly enhances productivity and speeds up service delivery.
In this article, we will be looking at some of the disadvantages of the division of labor as it affects the production of goods and services.
As much as a division of labor is good and great, it also has its own peculiar limitations, of course, there is nothing that has an advantage without disadvantage.
The disadvantages of division of labor are so heavy that one has to properly weigh both options before decided to choose effectively whether to employ division of labor or to shun it. In this article, we will look at five disadvantages of division of labor.
Read Also: Types and Importance of Labour
Disadvantages of Division of Labour
Disadvantages of Division of Labour:
1. Monotony or repetition
In the division of labor, a worker performs the same job on a daily basis, the job, therefore, becomes monotonous and boring to him and this may lead to loss of interest in the job being done.
2. Decline in craftsmanship
Because of the advent of technological equipment, a lot of persons have stopped using their skills to do anything simply because machines do it faster than humans would in the production of goods, instead of using their skills, a lot of people are now machine-dependent.
Read Also: Characteristics of Labour
3. Reduction in employment opportunities
When the division of labor is in place, people are usually replaced with machines, and the jobs that people ought to do are now replaced with machines leading to the increased rate of unemployment in the labor market which ultimately brings down the economy of the country.
4. The problem of the mobility of labor
Division of labor usually brings up another challenge called ‘specialization’. A person is restricted to only a particular area of the job and does not get the opportunity to do other sections of the overall job, leading to isolation and most times makes the person sick because he is unable to move to other areas of the job.
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5. Problems from increased interdependence
Division of labor has caused a lot of companies to be dependent on a particular staff or department simply because they are in charge of that section and in case of absence or strike, the company cannot function properly because of the dependency which was caused by the division of labor.
6. Difficulty in control
Sometimes, because of the very many fractions split out just to make work easier, the system becomes difficult to control especially when there is an adamant leader in one of the subsections, people may sometimes not know who to take instructions from and this may cause a bit of disorderliness in the overall system.
7. Difficulty in promotion
Sometimes, a good staff gets to be paired with a bad head of the department and the staff gets to do all the work while the leader of his unit gets to take the credit. It would very difficult for the staff who has been working to be noticed so as to be enlisted for a promotion or recognition.
Read Also: Advantages of Division of Labour
Having analyzed the disadvantages of division of labor, one would see that it is rather okay if sometimes, work should be done without the use of division of labor as it sometimes slows the whole process down.
