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Adam Smith Beyond A Pin Factory Summary

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Beyond a Pin Factory HSS 103 : A History Of IdeasAssignment 1 V. AbhijayIMT2012049 Abstract The concept of division of labour put forth by Adam Smith still continues to be analytically significant, perhaps not in the raw form as stated in his work : An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations(1776). The purpose of this document is to provide an insight into why this concept is still so prevalent in the contemporary societies. Adam Smith's story of the pin-maker has been repeated endlessly by economists as it encapsulates the benefits of one of the earliest production functions, namely division of labour. The story illustrates how much greater output could be achieved by dividing a complex task of making a pin into smaller …show more content…

A typical fast food restaurant, say McDonald's, is still based on these principles. A worker has become an expert in the task allotted to him, be it taking the customer order or adding cheese to the hamburger, due to the repetitive nature of the work. The workers also save time as their is no need to switch from one task to another. The machine that aids the workers further improve the efficiency of the entire …show more content…

It is the extent of the market that drives the division of labour and the division of labour that drives the extent of the market. The significance of this theorem in today's scenario has manifested itself in the form of cities, where people have come together to truck, exchange and barter. Outsourcing of business to a country is again an example of division of labour prevalent in modern societies. Division of labour has been branched out to spacial division of labour, the example of which could be a company like Infosys exporting software overseas or countries offshoring work to another. Not only this, there has been a social division of labour where we have a cardiologist for a heart disorder and a fashion designer for designing

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