A business (also known as an enterprise, a company or a firm) is

an organizational entity and legal entity made up of an association of people, be

they natural, legal, or a mixture of both who share a common purpose and unite in order to
focus their various talents and organize their collectively available skills or resources to
achieve specific declared goals and are involved in the provision
of goods and services to consumers.[1][2]
A company or association of persons can be created at law as legal person so that the
company in itself can accept limited liability for civil responsibility and taxation incurred as
members perform (or fail) to discharge their dutywithin the publicly declared "birth
certificate" or published policy.
Because companies are legal persons, they also may associate and register themselves as
companies often known as a corporate group. When the company closes it may need
a "death certificate" to avoid further legal obligations.
Businesses serve as conductors of economic activity, and are prevalent
in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and provide goods and
services allocated through a market to consumers and customersin exchange for other
goods, services, money, or other forms of exchange that hold intrinsic economic value.
Businesses may also be social nonprofit enterprises or state-owned public enterprises
operated by governments with specific social and economic objectives.
A business owned by multiple private individuals may form as an incorporated company or
jointly organize as a partnership. Countries have different laws that may ascribe different
rights to the various business entities.
The word "business" can refer to a particular organization or to an entire market sector (for
example, "the finance business" is "the financial sector") or to all economic sectors
collectively ("the business sector"). Compound forms such as "agribusiness" represent
subsets of the concept's broader meaning, which encompasses all activity by suppliers of
goods and services.
Typically private-sector businesses aim to maximize their profit, although in some contexts
they may aim to maximize their sales revenue or their market share. Government-run
businesses may aim to maximize some measure of social welfare.

Contents
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1Etymology
2Forms
3Classifications
4Activities
o 4.1Accounting
o 4.2Finance
o 4.3Manufacturing
o 4.4Marketing
o 4.5Research and development
o 4.6Sales
5Management
o 5.1Restructuring state enterprises
6Organization and regulation
o 6.1Commercial law
o 6.2Capital
o 6.3Intellectual property
o 6.4Trade union
7See also
 8References

Etymology[edit]
The English word company has its origins in the Old French military term compaignie (first
recorded in 1150), meaning a "body of soldiers",[3] and originally from the Late
Latin word companio "companion, one who eats bread [pane] with you", first attested in
the Lex Salica as a calque of the Germanic expression *gahlaibo (literally, "with bread"),
related to Old High German galeipo "companion" and Gothic gahlaiba "messmate". By
1303, the word referred to trade guilds. Usage of company to mean "business association"
was first recorded in 1553,[citation needed] and the abbreviation "co." dates from 1769.
The Old English bisignes (Northumbrian) "care, anxiety, occupation," from bisig "careful,
anxious, busy, occupied, diligent" (see busy (adj.)) + -ness. Middle English sense of "state
of being much occupied or engaged" (mid-14c.) is obsolete, replaced by busyness.
Sense of "a person's work, occupation" is first recorded late 14c. (in late Old English bisig
(adj.) appears as a noun with the sense "occupation, state of employment"). Meaning "what
one is about at the moment" is from 1590s. Sense of "trade, commercial engagements" is
first attested 1727.