Chapter 1 The Study of Business, Government and Society

Chapter 1

Keyterms:

1.       Business: Profit-making activity that provides products and services to satisfy human needs.

2.       Government: Structures and processes in society that authoritatively make and apply policies and rules.

3.       Society:  A network of human relations composed of ideas, institutions, and material things.

4.       Idea: An intangible object of thought.

5.       Value: An enduring belief about  which fundamental life choices are correct.

6.       Ideology: a bundle of values that creates a particular view of the world.

7.       Institution:  A formal pattern of relation that links people together to accomplish a goal.

8.       Material things: Tangible artifacts of a society that shape and are shaped by ideas and institutions.

9.       Social Contract:  An underlying agreement between business society on basic duties and responsibilities business must carry out to retain public support. It may be reflected in laws and regulations.

10.   Market economy: The economy that emerges when people move beyond subsistence production to production for trade, and markets take on a more central role.

11.   Capitalism: An economy in which private  individuals and corporations own the means  of production and , motivated  by the desire for profit, compete in free markets under conditions of limited restraint by government.

12.   Managerial capitalism: A market economy in which the dominant businesses are large firms run by salaried managers, not smaller firms run by owner-entrepreneurs.

13.   Laissez-faire: An economic philosophy that rejects government intervention in markets

14.   Populism: a political pattern, recurrent in world history, in which common people who feel  oppressed or disadvantaged seek to take power from a ruling elite seen as thwarting fulfillment of collective welfare. 

15.   Stakeholder: An entity that is benefited or burdened by the actions of a corporation or whose actions may benefit or burden the corporation. The corporation has an ethical duty toward these entities.

16.   Primary stakeholders: Entities in a relationship with the corporation in which they, the corporation or both are affected immediately, continuously, and powerfully.

17.   Secondary Stakeholders: Entities in a relationship with the corporation in which the effects on them, the corporation, or both are less significant and pressing.

18.   Strategic management: Actions taken by managers to adapt a company to changes in its market and sociopolitical environments.

19.   Theory: A statement or vision that creates insight by describing patterns or relationships in a diffuse subject matter. A good theory is concise and simplifies complex phenomena.

20.   History: the study of phenomena  moving  through time. 

Reaction: 

     This chapter covers interesting models of the BGS relationship as well as different perspectives, the use of theory, description, and case studies. The chapter went on to say that theories simplify and organize areas of knowledge by describing patterns or regularities in the subject matter and that they are important in every field. There are economic theories about the impact of government regulation, scientific theories regarding industrial pollution, political theories explaining corporate  power and legal theories.