Advantages and Disadvantages of Specialization

In today’s world where everything is scanned so minutely that any error will not go unnoticed which is the main reason why specialization has gained prominent importance and all companies all over the world are focusing on specialization. Specialization in simple words means doing the same thing over and over until one becomes expert in doing that particular task, in order to understand this concept better let’s look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of specialization –

Advantages of Specialization

1. The biggest advantage of specialization is that it reduces the risk of error as the person who is a specialist is less likely to commit a mistake in doing a particular task than a non-specialist person doing the same task. For example, a regular goalkeeper will make fewer mistakes as compared to a makeshift keeper.
2. Another advantage of specialization is that it saves time because if one keeps doing the same thing over and over again then he or she finds the shortcut way to do the thing which in turn results in a lot of saving of time. An ideal example of it will be a cab driver, cab driver knows all routes of the city and when you want to go to someplace in a hurry than cab driver will take you quickly as compared to you yourself driving.
3. It results in saving of money for the company because due to specialization company does not have to incur expenses on training because if worker is moved from one job to another then he or she needs to be trained for doing a task but in case of specialization since worker is not moving anywhere there is no need to train him or her. Also, since the worker is not moving from one place to another it results in a saving of time because a new worker takes a time to understand the work and constantly changing will result in a lot of time wastage as far as the company is concerned.

Disadvantages of Specialization

1. Monotonous work is the biggest drawback of specialization because if you do same work for 1 week you will not feel anything, however, if you do same work for 1 month then you will treat as routine however if you do the same work for 1 year then you will be frustrated with the work which in turn will result in inefficiency creeping in the work.
2. Specialization also makes workers complacent because due to repetitive nature of work they do not push themselves and monotony together with complacency is a deadly combination because both the factors reduce the efficiency of the workers which in turn results in the loss for the company.
3. Another disadvantage of specialization is that company loses flexibility because if worker knows only one thing than the company in case of emergency cannot shift the worker to do some other task as worker does not know how to do work and also if specialist worker is on leave than nobody else can take his or her position leading to disruption of work. Hence due to specialization worker is not able to develop a multi-tasking trait leading to loss of flexibility by the company in managing the day to day operations.

Hence, one can see from the above that specialization has both advantages, as well as disadvantages and companies focusing on specialization, should carefully look at both benefits and limitations and then take the decision.