BUSINESS

A business (also known as enterprise or firm) is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers or other businesses. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, in which most of them are privately ownedformed and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Owners engage in business administration either directly or indirectly through the employment of managers. Owner managers, or hired managers administer to three component resources that constitute the business' value or worth: financial resources, capital or tangible resources, and human resources. These resources are administered to in at least five functional areas: legal contracting, manufacturing or service production, marketing, accounting, financing, and human resourcing. 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.