ABSTRACT
Few people can build a car by themselves, but companies like Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagenturn out thousands of cars every year by dividing car building into simple assembly-line jobs. Likewise, insurance policies cannot be underwritten by individuals working alone, but companies like Allstate, State Farm, and Prudential succeed by breaking down policy preparation into a number of less complicated clerical tasks. As described in Chapter 2, the division of labor, in which difficult work is broken into smaller tasks, enables organized groups of people to accomplish tasks that would otherwise be beyond their physical or mental capacities as individuals.
