Kiel Working Papers, Kiel Institute for World Economics
No 1670:
Complementary Tasks and the Limits to the Division of Labour
Dennis Görlich
Abstract: During the recent decades, multitasking has become a more
and more common phenomenon at workplaces. Rather than specializing in a job
task, workers perform bundles of tasks. Bundling occurs when tasks are
complements. Using individual-level data about job tasks, we analyze which
tasks are complements. Such intrapersonal task complementarities limit the
division of labour as complementary tasks can only be unbundled at a cost
(productivity loss). To illustrate this point, we apply our findings to the
debate about the offshorability of jobs and show that the number of
potentially offshorable jobs is significantly lower when task
complementarities are accounted for. We also advance the current literature
on offshorability by introducing an indicator at the task-level, rather
than the occupation-level
Keywords: tasks, complementarities, offshoring, offshorability, division of labor; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: F16,; L23,; J22; (follow links to similar papers)
34 pages, December 2010
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