Business; Company; Firm; Concern

– Business is the production, buying, and selling of goods and services.

– A business, company, or firm is an organization that sells goods or services.

– A business may also be referred to formally as a concern.

Enterprise; free enterprise; private enterprise

Commerce - Commercial

– A business may be referred to approvingly as an enterprise to emphasize its adventurous, risk-taking qualities, and business in general may be referred to in the same way, for example, in combinations such as free enterprise and private enterprise.

Business is also referred to as commerce. This word and its related adjective commercial are often used to distinguish the business sphere from other areas such as government or the arts, or to distinguish it from non-money-making activities.

Business ethics – a set of moral rules and principles that should be adhered to in business communication.

Business law - Understanding business law takes many years. No one expects a small business owner to get a law degree or to have a complete understanding of legal concepts related to business ownership and operation. Because you will deal with numerous people, products and companies, you should be aware of your rights and responsibilities. Common sense and caution are essential in business. A general understanding of business law and insurance go hand in hand with good business management.

Business strategy – company’s aims in a particular market, and the way it hopes to achieve them.

Business tax – five major types of business taxes are:

- corporate franchise tax;

- employment (withholding) tax;

- excise tax,

- gross-receipts tax,

- value added tax (VAT).

Some types of firms (such as insurance, mining, and petroleum extraction companies) pay additional taxes peculiar to their industries. While firms too pay income, property, and sales taxes, such taxes are not specific to businesses.

In terms of economic impact, however, all taxes are ‘people taxes’ because they affect human beings and not some abstraction labeled ‘business’.

It is also called business activity tax.

Business tax appears in the definitions of the following terms: tax preparation services, business franchise tax, gross receipts tax, and shifting and incidence of taxation.

C

Campaign – planned operation or group of activities which aims to obtain a particular result.

Capital – the money from shareholders and lenders that can be invested in assets in order to start up a business and produce profit.

Chamber of commerce – an association of local businessmen (employers, manufacturers, and traders) with the aim of discussing subjects of common interest, of improving trading conditions and of encouraging business generally.

Cheque (BrE)/ Check (AmE) – a direction in writing to a bank to pay a stated sum of money on demand to a named person or organization.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – the highest official of a business organization responsible for running in properly and profitably.

City/ The City – the area of London where most financial institutions are based; London’s financial institution, for example, the International Stock Exchange and other markets, banks, investment and insurance companies considered together.

Client – a person or organization that pays for services provided by a professional person or organization.

Commitment — determination to work at something or intention to support something.

Compensation — money or cover a loss caused by somebody else.

Competition – rivalry between businesses in the same market.

Perfect competition is one of the structure-conduct-performance models of the ‘theory of the firm’ in economics. A set of assumptions is made which enables a model of a perfectly competitive market to be constructed. The structure of the market determines the behavior and performance of firms that sell in the market. In the real world fishermen and farmers often operate in perfectly competitive markets.

There is a general presumption that monopoly power is against the public interest – that prices will be higher and output lower than in competitive industries and that monopolies will seek to exploit consumers who have little or not choice. There may also be inefficiency in monopoly because the firm is protected from competition by barriers to entry and the firm may not be Х-efficient. Competition policy (the laws and arrangements that exist to encourage competition and discourage monopoly) is used in the UK to influence the behavior of individual firms and to change market structures.

Competitive – more capable of succeeding n business operations than other companies.

Consumer – a person whose wants are satisfied by producers of goods or providers of services.

Various measures of the cost of living are used in the United Kingdom, including the Consumer Expenditure Deflator (CED), which is based on the national income accounts, the Taxes and Prices Index (TPI), which was introduced by the government in 1979 in order to take account of reductions in direct taxation, and the Retail Prices Index (RPI), which is the most widely used measure.

Contracts - agreements which a business owner makes in the course of carrying on a business may be called contracts.

A contract is a legal agreement between two or more parties in which each has rights and obligations. Contracts may be enforced by the courts if they meet certain requirements. A contract must have the following characteristics to be legal: mutual agreement, consideration, form, competency, and legal subject matter. Since contracts can be enforced by law, it is important that people understand them. When an individual fails to honor a contract, the other parties to the contract can legally require that the contract by fulfilled or a satisfactory remedy be provided. For an agreement to be mutual there must be a clear, definite, and serious offer and an unqualified acceptance. If there is to be mutual agreement, there is no need for a true meeting of the minds. This means that the parties involved need not to be thinking of the same thing.

Core business/ competencies/ activity/ product – a business, activity or products that make the most money for a company and are considered to be its most important ones.

Corporate culture – a mix of values, expectations, styles and practices which characterize a given business organization.

What is corporate culture? There are two answers to this question, one non-academic and one academic. In the non-academic approach, the basic definition of corporate culture is ‘the personality of an organization,’ or simply ‘how things are done around here. «It includes:

– core values and beliefs

– corporate ethics

– rules of behavior.

Corporate culture can be expressed in the company’s mission statement and other communications, in the architectural style or interior decoration of offices, by what people wear to work, by how people address each other, and in the titles given to various employees.

Corporate identity – the qualities of a company that distinguish it from others and are often expressed in its name or in the design of its packaging and publicity materials.

Corporation – a company registered under the Companies Act; a large company or a public organization.

Corporate; Multinational; Big business; Small and medium- sized companies; Small business; Small firm

Large companies are referred to as corporations, especially in the United States.

Corporate is used to describe things relating to a corporation or to corporations in general.

Large companies operating in many countries are multinationals.

Big business can refer to large business organizations or to any business activity that makes a lot of money.

Small companies are referred to as small businesses or small firms.

Unlike some languages, English does not have an everyday term for small and medium-sized companies, apart from this rather clumsy expression.

Covering letter/ cover letter (AmE) – a letter sent with a document explaining the contents; a short explanation accompanying a package.

Curriculum Vitae (CV)/ Resume – a short account of a person’s education, qualifications, work experience, interest and social activities, usually supplied by a job applicant to a potential employer.

Culture shock — negative feelings of surprise when people move to a different environment.

Customer – a buyer, esp. a person who buys at a shop or a restaurant, or stays at a hotel, or has an account with a bank.

The customer is the justification for the existence of a company and for its employees. Too often companies are internally focused on their own procedures and processes. They forget that customers are not just parts of the system but the reason for it. The customer may not always be right but proving them wrong is always wrong!

D

Decision-making – a process of discussion by which an organization determines its policy and resolves any problems and issues.

Delegate (v) – delegation (n) – to give a job, a task or responsibility usually carries out by a manager to someone in a lower position.

To understand delegation, you really have to think about people. Delegation cannot be viewed as an abstract technique, it depends upon individuals and individual needs. The key is to delegate gradually. If you present someone with ta task which is daunting, one with which he or she does not feel able to cope, then the task will not be done and your staff will be severely demotivated. Instead you should build up gradually; first a small task leading to a little development, then another small task which builds upon the first; when that is achieved, add another stage; and so on. This is the difference between asking people to scale a sheer wall, and providing them with a staircase. Each task delegated should have enough complexity to stretch that member of staff – but only a little.

Demand – the wants of buyers in the market.

Department of Economics –

The department trains future economists in standard economic theory as well as in many applied fields. The program enables students to use the tools of economic analysis in order to solve problems that today’s societies face.