Events

Dr. Jie Gong
Assistant Professor
Department of Strategy and Policy
NUS Business School, National University of Singapore

Becker and Murphy (1992) proposed that job specialization would increase productivity but is limited by the costs of coordinating workers. They reasoned that technology facilitates coordination, and so, increases specialization and productivity. Here, we propose a different role for technology. Automation substitutes machines for workers in particular tasks, leaving workers to specialize in the non-automated tasks, hence not requiring coordination. Specialization reduces the marginal cost of effort, and so, workers increase effort and productivity. The proposition is supported by a field experiment. Conventionally, supermarket cashiers perform two tasks – scan purchases and collect payment. Singapore supermarkets divided the job, with humans scanning and machines collecting payment. The new job design increased cashier productivity in scanning by over 10 percent. Productivity rose by increasing effort in scanning, rather than through learning or reducing task-switching.