IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pophec/v8y2009i1p101-129.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From the organization to the division of cognitive labor

Author

Listed:
  • Fred D'Agostino

    (The University of Queensland, Australia, f.dagostino@uq.edu.au)

Abstract

Discussion of the cognitive division of labor has usually made very little contact with relevant materials from other disciplines, including theoretical biology, management science, and design theory. This article draws on these materials to consider some unavoidable conundrums faced by any attempt to present a particular way of dividing tasks among a labor team as the uniquely rational way of doing this, given the interdependence of the underlying evaluative standards by which the products of a system of division of labor will be judged. Divisions of labor will typically cut across these interdependencies in ways which leave the outcomes of a process of labor hostage to path dependencies and suboptimalities. Some attempts to avoid these results are shown to be unsuccessful. All these difficulties are compounded by the fact that, in many cases, the division of labor has to be constructed over a ground of values that is itself being constructed simultaneously with the products which they are invoked to assess.

Suggested Citation

  • Fred D'Agostino, 2009. "From the organization to the division of cognitive labor," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 8(1), pages 101-129, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:8:y:2009:i:1:p:101-129
    DOI: 10.1177/1470594X08098873
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X08098873
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1470594X08098873?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:8:y:2009:i:1:p:101-129. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.