A business (also known as enterprise or firm) is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit or state-owned. A business owned by multiple individuals may be referred to as a company, although that term also has a more precise meaning.
The etymology of "business" relates to the state of being busy either as an individual or society as a whole, doing commercially viable and profitable work. The term "business" has at least three usages, depending on the scope — the singular usage to mean a particular organization; the generalized usage to refer to a particular market sector, "the music business" and compound forms such as agribusiness; and the broadest meaning, which encompasses all activity by the community of suppliers of goods and services. However, the exact definition of business, like much else in the philosophy of business, is a matter of debate and complexity of meanings.
Read more about Business: Basic Forms of Ownership, Classifications, Management, Organization and Government Regulation
Famous quotes containing the word business:
“Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nations press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.”
—Herbert Hoover (18741964)
“In the haunted house no quarter is given: in that respect
Its very much business as usual. The reductive principle
Is no longer there, or isnt enforced as much as before.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done
Its very rude of him, she said,
To come and spoil the fun!”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (18321898)