Business Studies For Dummies

Richard Pettinger

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781118348116
• eBook ISBN: 9781118348147
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Your hands-on introduction to modern business and business education

Whether you're deciding on a course of study, headed to university, or settling down to your first year, Business Studies For Dummies provides you with a thorough overview of the subjects that form the foundation of a business studies degree.

You'll get trusted, easy-to-follow coverage of all the topics you'll encounter: business start-up, accounting and finance, operations, human resources, management, analytics, business environment, and economics.

• Includes a clear, engaging, and concise overview of the key topics you'll encounter in your studies
• The perfect study companion for students

With Business Studies For Dummies, you'll be one step ahead of the competition—at university and on the job.

Part I

What Is Business?

For Dummies can help you get started with lots of subjects. Visit www.dummies.com to learn more and do more with For Dummies.

In this part . . .

Get to grips with business. Identify whether studying business is for you and get advice on exactly how to go about doing this.

Apply a business-like approach to all business activity in order to improve the running of your commercial, public sector or not-for-profit business.

Acclimatize yourself to your business’s environment by learning about the internal and external influences on your business.

Optimize your business analyses skills to evaluate opportunities, constraints, drives and pressures from all parts of your business environment.

Chapter 1

Understanding Business and Business Studies

In This Chapter

Understanding why and how people study business

Thinking about the part that business plays socially and economically

Considering the risks facing businesses

Looking at the bigger picture: the business environment

Seeing what pressures businesses contend with

Welcome to the world of business and business studies!

The world of business is truly exciting. It provides everything that you need, want, consume and use in every part of your life. But the world of business can also be a scary one – times are uncertain, and this uncertainty is causing great changes in how companies and organisations conduct their affairs, how people organise their working and domestic lives, and how essential services (such as housing, energy and transport) are provided, delivered and paid for.

So, people knowing as much as possible about business is vital – how business is organised and structured, and how it goes about delivering what it’s supposed to produce.

That’s where you come in! Whether you’re studying business in order to get qualifications, or whether you’re doing so purely out of interest, you will acquire much greater knowledge, insight, understanding – and, ultimately, expertise – in everything to do with business and how business is conducted by reading this book!

In this chapter, I start you off on your business studies path by laying down the basics of this field of study, from defining business and understanding why people study it and how, to looking at the role of businesses, risks, the business environment, beneficiaries and stakeholders and, finally, the pressures that businesses face.

Defining Business

Business students must know the answers to two key questions:

What is business? Answer: the provision of products and services for consumption, in return for an agreed-upon price, charge or fee, or for having paid taxes and charges at some point (usually for public services – this also applies to direct debit payments for electricity, gas and water).

What is a business? Answer: an entity – an organisation – that conducts a particular set of activities, the purpose of which is to provide something – products, services or both – that’s of value to all or part of the community.

Ultimately, think of all organisations as businesses, whether they work on purely commercial lines, or whether they’re government departments, public service providers or charities. This makes studying business much more straightforward. Besides, all public service and charitable organisations are now run very much on ‘business lines’, with the kinds of pressures on their resources that have always occurred in commercial activities.

Why Study Business?

Business provides a fundamental structure for every part of society, affecting every walk of life and part of life. Most of what you do relates to businesses of one sort or another.

Obviously, businesses provide work, but they also provide plenty of other things that people need, such as holidays, cars, clothes, food and furniture. If you need healthcare, or want an education, or even water, gas or electricity, then schools and hospitals and the utility companies – businesses by any other name – exist to provide these services. And, of course, you expect businesses to be business-like – professional and expert. For example, you want healthcare or education to be delivered by experts, not just by people who fancy the job.

So you have an immediate rationale for studying business – without business, you’d have a hugely different life. People depend on businesses of all kinds for every part of their daily lives. Business delivers work, income, energy, transport, communications,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: What Is Business?
• Part II: How Business Works
• Part III: How to Be a Business and Do Business
• Part IV: Money, Money, Money
• Part V: The Awkward Bit: The People!
• Part VI: Putting It All Together
• Part VII: The Part of Tens
• About the Author
• Cheat Sheet
• Connect with Dummies