WHAT IS ''BUSINESS''

Business is an organization comprising people who strive together to achieve common objectives and goals. It is important for a business organization to have a vision that implies what it intends to achieve in the future and values that represent the organization’s integrity. A business organization is a commercial, industrial, or mercantile enterprise, and comprises the people who constitute it. Business is a legally-recognized organization which provides goods, services, or both to the consumers. According to F. C. Hooper, “The whole complex field of commerce and industry, the basic industries, processing and manufacturing industries, the network of ancillary services, distribution, banking, insurance, transport and so on, which serve and interpenetrate the work of business as a whole, are business activities.”

Business is an organization comprising people who strive together to achieve common objectives and goals. It is important for a business organization to have a vision that implies what it intends to achieve in the future and values that represent the organization’s integrity. ADVERTISEMENTS: Organizations need to create an envi­ronment where people want to work and concurrently develop themselves through coaching, feedback, and information sharing.

A business house should work in partnership with its employees, customer, suppliers, community, and the media. In order to enhance the image, it should communicate the key messages, both internally and externally, and gain commitment to its principal goals. A reputed business house often prefers to share its best practices with its competitors as it believes in networking, partnering, and informal collaboration. It should even undertake a practice of rewarding its employees when they perform well. It should establish a process to learn, grow, and measure its suc­cesses.

Thus, the primers of an organization include vision, values, behaviors/competencies/standards, coaching, information sharing, networking, rewarding, and continuous learning. A business organization is a commercial, industrial, or mercantile enterprise, and comprises the people who constitute it. Business is a legally-recognized organization which provides goods, services, or both to the consumers. In order to develop an understanding of business organizations, one should be able to identify the differences between the private and public sectors of the economy, state the traditional examples of business organizations in the private sector (sole trader, partnership, and private limited and public limited companies), understand the difference in terms of liability among these business types, and identify two non-traditional business types (co-operatives and franchises).

The fundamental idea regarding business is that it is an economic activity and business decision-making is an economic process. The principal aim of any business is to make profit. An HR manager must have the ability to understand the changes in an environment, and the direction and speed of those changes. He/she should be able to develop an action plan that is essential to cope with the changes, involve employee representatives, gain their confidence, implement the changes, and finally measure the benefits of these changes. Understanding an organization encompasses understanding its structures, behaviors, cultures, resources, and functions, and how it learns to manage the external environment.

Once the business environment has been understood, all the activities taking place inside and outside it are also easily understood. The purpose of every business is to serve customers well. It has to deliver value by offering good quality goods/services at an affordable price. To survive and flourish in the economic jungle, businesses have to win the hearts of customers by putting resources to best use. Businesses, essentially, exist for customers.

1. Challenge and Excitement:

Businesses offer challenge, excitement and immense satisfaction if one is able to run them successfully. There is, evidently, tremendous incentive for everyone to run the race ahead of rivals and make money. Businesses generate employment and offer livelihood for millions of people all over the world.

2. Economic Institutions:

Businesses are economic institutions, they survive as long as they are able to make money. Profit is the risk premium and reward for the efforts and hard work put in by the businessman. Profit is the engine of growth and is a measure of the success of a busi­ness. Without profits, businesses collapse under their own weight.

3. Create, Communicate and Deliver Value:

Apart from making money, Businesses need to offer unmatched value to customers. They must keep costs low. They need to offer high quality goods. They need to do the job netter than rivals. Only then they will play a long innings.

4. Risky Path Full of Problems:

It is well worth remembering here that the path of a businessman is full of thorns. The tastes of customers might change, competition may get heated up, rivals may come out with novel products/services at a lesser price, government may impose additional taxes making the business unviable, etc. Every businessman, therefore, must be prepared to accept risk and uncertainty. He must think and act like a winner always.

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