 Engineering and labor specialization during the industrial revolutionDarrell Glaser () and Ahmed Rahman Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, 2014, vol. 8, issue 2, 173-200 Abstract: This paper explores how technological changes affected labor allocations within the U.S. Navy. During the latter nineteenth century, the officer corps was highly specialized, split between groups of line and staff officers. Developments in general purpose technologies created a dilemma for the organization, as it balanced between the benefits of a specialized workforce implementing increasingly complex technologies with rising communication and coordination costs. We first document the nature and extent of labor specialization in the mid-nineteenth-century Navy—engineers worked more with newer and larger vessels, while line officers worked more with unskilled personnel. The Navy endeavored to destroy this distinction, forcing generalized training and tasks for all officers. We suggest that the Navy’s phased-in approach was an effective strategy, helping the U.S. to become a world-class naval power. Keywords: Skilled labor complementarity; Skill-replacing and skill-using technology; Labor allocation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:afc:cliome:v:8:y:2014:i:2:p:173-200 Access Statistics for this article Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History is currently edited by Claude Diebolt, Dora Costa and Jean-Luc Demeulemeester More articles in Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History from Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC) Contact information at EDIRC. |
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