Tasks inside a ball

A football connects several kinds of production work before it reaches a pitch. FIFA’s 2018 account describes synthetic material built into layers, printed and cut into panels, then assembled around a bladder. Manufacturers in Sialkot supplied other companies’ brands as well as some brands of their own. The relationship joined local production knowledge to products marketed elsewhere. A city’s reputation for making footballs therefore covered coordinated tasks and commercial relationships, rather than one uniform stitching process.[2]

When saving material slows work

David Atkin and his co-authors studied one part of that coordination in firms cutting their own laminated material. Their 2016-revised working paper follows firms through survey rounds in 2012–14 and an experiment with a cutting die designed to reduce waste. The difficulty was that a pattern saving material could initially slow cutters, whose pay depended on output. Cutters and printers were central to implementing the change. Gains for the firm did not automatically reward the workers asked to change their routines. In a second experiment, researchers offered a cutter and printer a one-off payment for demonstrating competence with the new method. Adoption increased in this small study. They interpret this through incentives inside the firm. It shows why the organisation of pay belongs in a history of technical change: knowing how to improve material use was only part of making a new process workable.[1]

Changing methods and standards

FIFA’s account also distinguishes hand stitching, machine stitching, hybrid construction and thermal bonding. Different ways of joining panels connect workshop practice with changing product requirements. It records revised water-resistance testing in 2015 following improvements in ball construction. The dated account describes makers adapting techniques and quality controls together. Local skill could thus include learning new processes and maintaining consistency, while the product’s sporting use shaped what manufacturers were asked to achieve.[2]

Sources & notes

Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.

  1. David Atkin, Azam Chaudhry, Shamyla Chaudry, Amit K. Khandelwal and Eric Verhoogen; NBER WP 21417, author-hosted revised text. Organizational Barriers to Technology Adoption: Evidence from Soccer-Ball Producers in Pakistan ↗original economic field-experiment working paper · Source date: July 2015; revised July 2016 · Locator: Actual title/electronic cover PDF 1–2; printed pp. 7–9/PDF 9–11 manufacturing; pp. 12–13/PDF 14–15 sampling; pp. 23–25/PDF 25–27 second experiment and results. Accessed 2026-11-02.Selected passages actually inspected. NBER/author-host/IZA and later publication of the same experiment are one family, including identified companion accounts of its data. NBER landing page access failed 403; actual revised text is nevertheless inspected. Limits: Use the authors' interpretation and small-sample limitation. Do not represent this working-paper witness as the later peer-reviewed publication. No current wage claims, ethnic explanations of skill or general inference that workers lack innovation.Return to When saving material slows work, paragraph 1 ↑
  2. FIFA Quality Programme / FIFA. The Making of a Football ↗primary institutional report or description · Source date: 2018-08-06 · Locator: Actual dated article, intro, Production process, Hand stitched/Machine stitched/Hybrid/Thermal bonding and Quality control sections (web-reader lines 34–74). Accessed 2026-11-02.Selected passages actually inspected. Limits: A dated industry account, not a current factory or labour audit. Exclude current factory counts, universal production speeds and claim that every World Cup ball is hand stitched. The page now links a 2026 test manual; that manual was not inspected or used.Return to Tasks inside a ball, paragraph 1 ↑Return to Changing methods and standards, paragraph 1 ↑
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Record PH-JOU-0048 · English edition · human review not performed