BASIC FORMS OF BUSINESS

Types of business entity

Although the forms of ownership of business varies by jurisdiction,, there are several common forms:

1.Sole proprietorship: A sole proprietorship is a business owned by one person. The owner may operate on his or her own or may employ others. The owner of the business has unlimited liability of the debts incurred by the business.

2.Partnership: A form of business owned by two or more people. In most forms of partnerships, each partner has unlimited liability of the debts incurred by the business. There are three typical classifications of partnerships: general partnerships, limited partnerships, and limited liability partnerships.

3.Corporation: A limited liability entity that has a separate legal personality from its members. Corporations can be either privately-owned or government-owned, and can be organized as either for-profit or not-for-profit. A privately-owned, for-profit corporation is owned by multiple shareholders and is overseen by a board of directors, which hires the business's managerial staff.

4.Cooperative: Often referred to as a "co-op", a cooperative is a limited liability entity that can organize for-profit or not-for-profit. A for-profit cooperative differs from a for-profit corporation in that it has members, as opposed to shareholders, who share decision-making authority. Cooperatives are typically classified as either consumer cooperatives or worker cooperatives. Cooperatives are fundamental to the ideology of economic democracy.

Business

Business
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A business (also known as company, enterprise, or firm) is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods, services, or both to consumers.[1] Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, in which most businesses are privately owned and typically formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners. The owners and operators of private, for-profit businesses have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for work and acceptance of risk. Businesses can also be formed not-for-profit or be state-owned.

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 (above) to mean a particular company or corporation, the generalized usage to refer to a particular market sector, such as "the music business" and compound forms such as agribusiness, or the broadest meaning to include 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.