How things are made matters: The effects of technology on the organization of work

Given a particular product to produce, firms have several alternative production technologies from which to choose. This paper examines the effect of production technologies, directly and indirectly through complexity and task interdependence, on outcomes essential to the organization of work. Our study uses online job vacancy postings in the U.S. manufacturing sector during 2017-2021 to analyze technical occupations (i.e., engineers, technicians, and operators) in plants that implement one of six primary technologies: subtraction, forming, molding, additive manufacturing, chemical, and assembly. Controlling for different forms of automation, location, and other factors, we find that the differences in the division of labor, specialization, and span of control among technologies are driven by differences in complexity. Additive manufacturing, chemical, and assembly are technologically more complex than forming, molding, and subtraction, and, as a result, they need more jobs to be designed, more tasks and skills to be bundled into a job, and fewer employees to be overseen by a manager. Moreover, each technology exhibits a distinct pattern of two forms of task interdependence—reciprocal and sequential, and therefore the effects on the three outcomes are more nuanced.