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Notes on block 1
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- The Open University (OU)
It is the notes on the first block of the b100 course
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Defining the meaning of business:Businesses come in all different shapes and sizes, they sell different types of products or services to a
diverse range of customers. The definition of a business must describe what a business is and what it
does, and how it differs from other terms such as organisations, company, enterprise, firm.
Key Characteristics- Offers goods or services to customers, and these customers pay for the
goods/services, and that businesses expect to make an income from this. Businesses can also be not-
for-profit or state owned organisations, but they still provide goods/services for payment and
expected to provide an income for the owner, in the case of not-for-profit the income may be used
to support a charitable service.
Business, firm, and enterprise are generally used to describe the same thing, this isn't the same thing
as an organisation or company. An organisation is an organised group of people with a collective
person. Most businesses are therefore organisations but not all organisations are businesses
because not all organisations trade goods or services, examples include government departments,
city councils, most public owned hospitals and schools, charitable organisations etc. The distinction
between such organisations and businesses can sometimes be unclear. The management tasks and
challenges are similar between both businesses and organisations.
Organisations make it possible for objectives to be achieved that wouldn’t be able to with the efforts
of an individual. Organisations come in different shapes and sizes but have 3 common factors,
people, objectives, and structure. People in organisations work together to achieve organisational
objectives, some form of structure os needed so that the interaction and a joint effort can happen.
A company is often used in the same way as a business, in normal usage it means more or less the
same thing, however from a legal perspective a company and a business are not the same. Under
English law the definition of a company means an incorporated company registered under section 1
of the companies act 2006. The term business does not have the same legal definition.
Businesses differ in sizes, and although size is an obvious way to differentiate between businesses, it
is less obvious on how to measure the size. There are numerous measurements available however
not all suitable to measure all types of businesses, such as measuring a business's size on the basis of
how much profit it makes, assumes the business is a for-profit enterprise. Also measuring the stock
market value of a business assumes that its shares are traded on the stock market, and this is not
true for all businesses. The two measures that are applicable to nearly all businesses are the
number of employees, and annual turnover. These two don’t always accord with each other. The
European Commission uses a combination of the number of employees and turnover to define the
size of a business.
Large enterprises - Employ more than 250 people, have an annual turnover of more than 50
million
Medium-size enterprises - Employ fewer than 250 people, have an annual turnover of no
more than 50 million
Small enterprises - Employ fewer than 50 people , have an annual turnover of no more than
10 million
Microenterprises - Employ fewer than 10 people, have an annual turnover of no more than
2 million
Businesses with fewer than 250 employees are often collectively classified as small and medium
sized enterprises (SMEs)
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