• Work whether paid or unpaid can be defined as being the carrying out of tasks requiring the expenditure of mental and physical effort, which has some objective, the production of goods and services that cater to human needs. An occupation, or job, is work that is done in exchange for a regular wage or salary.
• In all cultures, work is the basis of the Economic System. The economic system consists of institutions that provide for the production and distribution of goods and services. .
• One of the most distinctive characteristics of the economic system of modern societies is the existence of a highly complex division of labour: work has been divided into an enormous number of different occupations in which people specialize.
• In traditional societies, non-agricultural work entailed the mastery of a craft. Craft skills were learned through a lengthy period of apprenticeship, and the worker normally carried out all aspect of the production process from beginning to end. For example a metalworker making a plough would forge the iron, shape it and assemble the implement itself. With the rise of modern industrial production, most traditional crafts have disappeared altogether, replaced by skills that form part of larger scale of production processes.

Industrial Society

• Industrialization is the process of social and economic change whereby a human group is transformed from a pre-industrial society into an industrial one. It is a part of wider modernization process, where social change and economic development are closely related with technological innovation, particularly with the development of large-scale energy and metallurgy production. It is the extensive organization of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing. Industrialization also introduces a form of philosophical change, where people obtain a different attitude towards their perception of nature.
• According to EMILE DURKHEIM, “Division of labour or specialization” is the specialization of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and roles, intended to increase the productivity of labour in Industrial society. Historically the growth of a more and more complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialization processes.
• Increasing the specialization may also lead to workers with poorer overall skills and a lack of enthusiasm for their work (Alienation). This viewpoint was extended and refined by Karl Marx. He described the process as alienation; workers become more and more specialized and work repetitious which eventually leads to complete alienation. Labour hierarchy is to a great extent inevitable, simply because no one can do all tasks at once; but of course the way these hierarchies are structured can be influenced by a variety of different factors. It is often agreed that the most equitable principle in allocating people within hierarchies is that of true (or proven) competency or ability. This important Western concept of meritocracy could be read as an explanation or as a justification of why a division of labour is the way it is.
• The concentration of labour into factories has brought about the rise of large towns to serve and house the working population. In a capitalist system, investments, distribution, income, production, pricing and supply of goods, commodities and services are determined by private decisions, usually within the context of markets. In a capitalist state, private property rights are protected by the rule of law of a government through a limited regulatory framework.
• According to Marx, the capitalist stage of development or ‘bourgeoisie society’, represented the most advanced form of social organization to date. But he also thought that working classes would come to power in worldwide socialist or communist transformation of human society as the end of the series of first aristocratic, then capitalist, and finally working class rule would be reached.
• According to Max Weber, Western Capitalism was, most generally, the “rational organization of formally free labor”. Industrial Society was characterized by Market Economy for Weber.