The culprit—the hierarchical division of labor—has another dimension relevant to physics: It leads to extreme specialization. In particle physics, for example, it is not unusual now for several hundred physicists from several dozen institutions to collaborate on a single experiment at an accelerator laboratory. Thus one routine paper in Physics Letters, reporting results from a standard-model experiment at the European particle accelerator laboratory CERN, has 562 authors from 39 universities and government laboratories.3 (The names under the title consume
three of the articles nine pages.) Each institutional group of physicists contributes a component of the experiment, and individual physicists within each group specialize even further. A professor might be occupied with budgets, production schedules or purchasing decisions. A research associate or postdoc might work on an electronics system, part of a particle detector or a computer program for receiving data. One might find a graduate student calibrating
photomultiplier tubes, soldering the hundreds of wires in a wire-chamber particle detector, tracing pulses through an electronics system or sitting in front of a computer terminal debugging a program. In any case, the typical physicist in the collaboration does work in which no amount of creativity could significantly influence the overall course of the experiment. And with narrow work assignments, individual initiative is more likely to cross boundaries and to be seen as intrusive, even if it makes sense scientifically.4
The division of labor within research projects is often so hierarchical that the distribution of authority is more like that of the military than that of a democracy. Professors are at the top, and are themselves organized in a strict hierarchy. (You can usually tell who's at the apex by looking at who is getting publicity, because the professors who have the most power within a physics project usually designate themselves "spokesmen" and forbid the other professors to speak to the press.) Next in line are "research physicists," who are PhDs whom professors hire with their federal contract or grant money; research physicists get professorial wages but do not get tenure or a vote at meetings of their university physics department. Postdocs follow, and graduate students are at the bottom. There is not even a pretense of democracy among these scientists. The professors at the top of the hierarchy have total creative control over the experiment. If a physicist below the top has a real say in what is done, that is not because a democratic structure ensures it, but because an individual at the top happens to be a "good boss" and allows it.
Those who are troubled by such practices within any field should examine the larger society within which the field operates. A critical and somewhat detailed examination of the division of labor outside of physics, for example, is necessary for anyone concerned about the practice of physics. First, this type of examination provides a deeper understanding of the external source of the hierarchy within physics, and thereby allows one to judge for oneself how amenable to change that source might be. Second, it alerts us to practices to watch out for in physics, for no field is immune to the increasing division of labor and the problems that come with it. While these problems may be most noticeable in large physics projects, they are certainly not confined to big physics. So, having traced the higher status of theorists to the hierarchical division of labor outside of physics, let us take a closer look at the role the division of labor plays in work as it is usually organized in the larger society.
No matter what the product is, employers divide the work into many parts and assign each employee to one type of activity. Narrowly focused individuals can work in a more machine-like way and get more work done per hour. Moreover, people who exercise fewer skills or simpler skills can be paid less. Hence, employers label the division of labor "efficient." But it is efficient only if one ignores the social cost of organizing production in a way in which jobs tend to be monotonous and unsatisfying. Such jobs, instead of allowing individuals to develop their mental and physical faculties by exercising them freely and fully (that is, instead of being fun), numb the mind and the body and retard the personal development of those employed to do them. A system of production that works efficiently toward the goals of employers does not necessarily work efficiently toward the goals of employees or toward the goals of society in general.
More important to employers than the economic benefits, however, are the political benefits of the division of labor—benefits that help management maintain its authority in the workplace. Confined to a range of activity that is limited both horizontally and vertically, employees do not gain firsthand knowledge of the overall organization, strategy or goals of the institution that employs them. Those who work within this division of labor see the consequent ignorance in themselves and in their coworkers and feel a need to be directed by people who comprehend the whole operation. Management has the broadest view of what is going on, and this helps make its supreme authority in the workplace seem natural and justified.
We should note, however, that even as employees feel the need for managers, they don't like actually being "managed." Least accepting of management’s authority are those who imagine greater self-management, at least for themselves. When employee resentment of management authority becomes sufficiently deep and widespread, the "efficient" system of production becomes inefficient even from management’s selfish point of view, because disaffected
employees engage in what amount to silent, personal strikes. Thus employee absenteeism, sloppy work, hostile attitudes and so on have forced some companies to ease up on the strict, know-your- place division of labor and try systems of production that are more personally empowering and engaging. These systems of greater self-management do require a less rigid division of labor so that employees can gain a broad understanding of the organization they are a part of, not through rumors and company newsletters, but through real participation in a wide range of activity at all levels.
Discouraging employees from thinking about self-management is not the only political function of the division of labor. By making employees easier to replace and by deflating their feeling of accomplishment in their work, the division of labor strips workers of their sense of power in the workplace, discouraging them from challenging management on the way the work is organized. And the division of work into narrow tasks (most of which are the same even when the product is different) denies workers a feeling for what they are producing, thereby discouraging them from
THE DIVISION OF LABOR 82
challenging management on the nature or design of the product or service. Hence the division of labor, by making self-management seem impossible and by strengthening management’s control over the workforce and over the content of the work, helps make the hierarchical system of production more secure.
The historical trend is toward an increasingly fine division of labor and an increasingly strict confinement of individual employees to their assigned areas of work. This trend affects
professionals and nonprofessionals alike, distancing all employees from decision-making on the overarching moral and political issues. Professionals are forced into increasingly narrow
specialization during training, and more than ever must specialize even further once on the job, especially when they are employed in large organizations, as is increasingly the case. So even the employees whom management trusts politically to use relatively broad technical and
organizational knowledge of the production process find management confining them to work on smaller and smaller pieces of the big picture. No professionals are immune. Even philosophers, who at one time struggled to develop thought that encompassed all human endeavors, are now hired on the basis of their willingness and ability to carry out the minutely specialized work of
analytical philosophy. Consequently, they increasingly identify themselves as masters of the associated specialized tools and methods, rather than as independent moral and political thinkers. Scientists, who are this chapters main example and whose specialization is typical of salaried professionals in all fields, should look critically at the division of labor and the problems that come with it. Social hierarchies are sources of social friction, and those in science are no
exception. Reducing the divisions of labor within science, and doing what we can to chip away at the external ones, will help break down social hierarchies in science and can only help make scientific work more fruitful, more socially beneficial and more fun.
NOTES
1. Sample survey of AIP society membership, work subfield versus theoretical/experimental focus for full-time PhD workers, for overall membership and for American Physical Society subset, unpublished 1998 data, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Md. (1998). 1997 Graduate Student Report, AIP R- 207.30, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Md. (July 1999), p. 2.
2. Advertisement by the Macsyma division of Symbolics Inc., Physics Today, February 1991, p. 43. 3. P. Aamio et al., "Measurement of the mass and width of the Z°-particle from multihadronic final states produced in e+e- annihilations," Physics Letters B, vol. 231 (16 November 1989), pp. 539-547.
4. For further discussion of some of the issues that this paragraph deals with, see the following article, which I have drawn upon: Andrew R. Pickering, W. Peter Trower, "Sociological problems of high-energy physics," Nature, vol. 318 (21 November 1985), pp. 243-245.