If organizations are multi-agent systems with goals, there must exist a mapping from organizational level goals to agent level tasks. Such a mapping, at least when explicitly recognized (even if not intentionally crafted) is what we think of typically as division of labor. Because the results of the efforts so divided must be integrated back, the division of labor results in interdependence bet...

This paper uses the concept of division of labor (Strauss, 1985) to explore two design settings (a middle-school classroom and a professional architecture firm) where people use both computer and paper-based practices for designing. I report that in both settings collaborative labor is divided between designers who work on paper and draftspersons who work with computers. Reasons for this divisi...

The volvocine algae provide an unrivalled opportunity to explore details of an evolutionary pathway leading from a unicellular ancestor to multicellular organisms with a division of labor between different cell types. Members of this monophyletic group of green flagellates range in complexity from unicellular Chlamydomonas through a series of extant organisms of intermediate size and complexity...

This study uses data from married women in 30 nations to examine justice processes involving perceptions of fairness of the division of household labor and satisfaction with family life. Relative deprivation theory suggests that national context—operationalized here as nation-level gender equity—might serve as a comparative referent used by married women when making determinations of the fairne...

This paper inspects the coordination of individuals’ decisions on specialization and the determination of labor division in a large competitive economy from a perspective of evolutionary game theory. It is shown that the equilibrium structure of labor division defined by new classical economics is in fact an evolutionarily stable state. In an evolutionary economic environment where the law of “...

Previous research showed that age-related division of labor in honey bees is associated with changes in activity rhythms; young adult bees perform hive tasks with no daily rhythms, whereas older bees forage with strong daily rhythms. We report that this division of labor is also associated with differences in both circadian rhythms and mRNA levels of period, a gene well known for its role in ci...

No research has examined the division of labor across the transition to parenthood for same-sex couples. The current study examined the division of labor in 29 lesbian couples (58 women) during the transition to parenthood. Women were interviewed during their last trimester and 3–4 months postnatally. Two theoretical approaches – gender theory and economic theory – were used to generate competi...

Biological populations often exhibit complex and efficient behaviors, where temporal and spatial couplings at the macroscale population level emerge from interactions at the microscale individual level, without any centralized control. This paper specifically investigates the emergence of behavioral synchronization and the division of labor in a foraging swarm of robotic agents. A deterministic...

Biological market forces shape patterns of cooperation typical of small-scale human societies that are organized by division of labor based on age and gender. Labor specialization promotes trade, while supply and demand affect the amount individuals exchange for commodities.

Honeybees have been studied for centuries, starting with Aristotle, who wrote the first book about bee breeding. More than 2000 years later, the honeybee entered the genomic era as the first social insect whose genome was sequenced, leading to significant insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying social behavior. In addition, gene expression studies and knockdown using RNAi have extended...