EclecticLip

In the past few decades, GM has sunk while Toyota has soared.  I suspect a big part of this is that GM extended division of labour too far.  The principle of division of labour went from being a strength, to a crippling strength.
Specifically, by dividing “manufacturing” from “improving manufacturing” and assigning specialists to each (line workers and engineers, respectively) GM dammed up the supply of cost-cutting solutions.  The people with the most expertise couldn’t contribute.
In contrast, Toyota kept “manufacturing” and “improving manufacturing” together — and so benefited (and continues to benefit) from a torrent of ideas for improvement.

Pericles made an analogous point in his Funeral Oration during the Peloponnesian War, describing why Athens would beat Sparta: words to the effect that “Sparta has one leader but we have thousands”, in reference to Athens’ democracy.

To be clear, I’m using Toyota and GM as metonyms.  More broadly speaking they represent two philosophies about labour:

- Toyota as the collaborative view (labour as a resource / asset)

- GM as the command view (labour as a commodity / cost)

The biggest irony is that senior executives at GM appear to have made a lot more money than their peers at Toyota.  In other words, their needle-narrow self-interest was served even as they drove the underlying support system (GM) to ruin!
The ominous analogy follows, for us wealthy first-worlders and the environment…