Business (business - “business”, “enterprise”) - an activity aimed at making a profit; any type of activity that generates income or other personal benefits. In Russian, the words business and entrepreneurship are synonymous. They are the most important attribute of a market economy, penetrating all its institutions.

Business, entrepreneurship - an independent activity carried out at one's own risk, aimed at systematically obtaining profit from the use of property, the sale of goods, the performance of work or the provision of services by persons registered in this capacity in the manner prescribed by law. The effectiveness of entrepreneurial activity can be assessed not only by the amount of profit received, but also by the change in the value of the business (the market value of the enterprise).

Business is a clear money making system. As soon as clarity disappears and business becomes non-systemic, chaotic, it turns into a bazaar. Business should always be a well-established system that always works well.

Business can be carried out by a legal entity or directly by an individual. In many countries, in order to conduct business activities, an individual must register as an individual entrepreneur.

Business is people. It is the relationship between people and between people. Business starts and ends with people. It exists for people. Your customers, your employees, your partners and yourself are people. The person is the unit of the business. The minimum active unit. Because one person generates demand, the other satisfies it. Business is always a balance of supply and demand, always harmony in the market. Business is the response of some people to the needs of others.

Business is a special kind of activity in which not everyone can succeed. It requires a strong character and due endurance, a willingness to work hard and take risks.

ESSENCE OF BUSINESS

The essence of a business is what it was organized for. First of all, it is a profit, to provide for their own needs, as well as in order to receive start-up capital for the implementation of another, larger business idea.

The essence of business is economic growth. Each business project separately is included in a single whole, called the country's economy. That is why business is supported at the state level. This is especially true for small and medium businesses. This includes preferential schemes for taxation, lending, etc.

From the point of view of each enterprise, the main goal of activity is to generate income, for which various effective schemes are used. From the point of view of the state, the essence of business is to create a powerful and stable economy. These goals are interrelated, because without a stable economy it is impossible to conduct business efficiently, just as without business, an efficient economy is impossible.

BUSINESS FUNCTIONS

The essence of a business can be reduced to the performance of several functions. In a developed market economy, it performs the following functions: pricing, creative search (innovative), resource, logistics, social, organizational.

One of the most important functions of a business is pricing. The essence of pricing comes down to setting the price of a product or service, the size of which depends on a number of factors: the cost price, the price of competitors, the ratio of supply and demand. This business function also includes the formation of a system of discounts and price correction. The pricing policy and the establishment of discounts and surcharges are the responsibility of the marketing department.

Without an innovative function, the organization will inevitably lose its competitiveness and lag behind the average market pace of development. It is associated with the use of new ideas in the process of entrepreneurial activity, with the development of new means and factors to achieve the goals, as well as with all other functions, supplementing them. Innovations can relate to various areas of the organization's activity: the formation of a product range, technology of working with a client, organizational structures, etc. To always be in the ranks and on top, an entrepreneur must constantly be aware of innovations.

The resource function of business is the most important. Entrepreneurship development involves the efficient use of both reproducible and limited resources. Resources should be understood as all material and non-material conditions and factors of production, of course, first of all, labor resources, land and natural resources, all means of production and scientific achievements, as well as entrepreneurial talent.

The function of the logistics business is to carry out actions aimed at acquiring raw materials, machinery, equipment and other assets used in production activities. The production function processes raw materials and other assets into a product to be sold to consumers.

The social function of business lies in the ability of every capable individual to be the owner of the business, to better show their individual talents and capabilities. This function is increasingly expressed in the formation of a new layer of people - enterprising, prone to independent economic activity, able to overcome the resistance of the environment and achieve their goals. Business development ensures the flow of funds to the budgets of various levels, the growth of jobs, the reduction of unemployment, and the strengthening of the social position of employees.

The organizational function of business is manifested in the adoption by entrepreneurs of independent decisions on organizing their own business, its diversification, in the formation of entrepreneurial management, the creation of complex entrepreneurial structures, changing the strategy of an entrepreneurial firm, etc.

BUSINESS CLASSIFICATION

Classification of business is carried out according to different criteria: by form of ownership, by nature of activity, by origin of capital, by industry, by degree of subordination, by volume of products.

By form of ownership:
a) an individual business based on the private property of an individual and on his work;
b) family firms;
c) rental property, based on lease agreements, necessary for the tenant to carry out entrepreneurial activities;
d) private business, which is based on the property of individual citizens with the right to hire workers;
e) collective enterprises founded by pooling the capital and property of various business entities, including foreign citizens;
f) state-owned enterprises and institutions based on national property.

By the nature of the activity:
a) commercial business, which is based on entrepreneurial activity;
b) non-commercial business (exists at the expense of the state budget and is financed by the state).

By origin of capital: national, foreign (respectively, only foreign capital), mixed.

By industry, business is divided into: industrial, agricultural, transport, trade, trade and intermediary, innovative.

According to the degree of subordination, the business can be divided into main and child campaigns and their branches:
a) the main companies control the activities of their subsidiaries;
b) subsidiaries are independent, but controlled (the controlling stake belongs to the head company) of the main enterprises, independently and on their own behalf carry out their activities;
c) a branch, unlike subsidiaries, does not have legal independence and freedom of activity, almost all the capital of a branch belongs to the parent company.

According to the volume of products produced and the breadth of the sphere of influence, business can be divided into: small, medium and large.

Small business in the modern Western economy forms the largest sector of the economy, where more than half of all employed people find work. The most typical form of small business has become the franchising system (from franchise - preferential).

Franchising is the acquisition of the right to use a ready-made business system. This is a type of business in which a well-known firm provides customers with its technology and its brand. Such contracts turn out to be mutually beneficial: small firms receive guardianship, loans, a trading zone from large corporations, and the latter save money by not spending it on selling their own products, and in addition they receive regular payments from their wards.

Small business is called upon:
a) expand the production of consumer goods and services, primarily for the poorest segments of the population, without significant capital investment;
b) to help equalize living conditions in various settlements;
c) to involve in production the material and financial resources of the population;
d) to employ workers who are released from large enterprises.

The social and political significance of small business is also great: it serves as the basis for the development of the "middle" class, which is the guarantor of stability in society.

International experience has convincingly shown that the development of small business is possible only if there is a targeted government policy towards small business, based on the need to develop this sector of the economy and understanding the vulnerability of small enterprises compared to large ones, due to the very nature of their functioning. The state helps small businesses, because it is necessary for both the state and the people.

Medium business, despite the fact that it has to compete with both large and small businesses, plays a significant role in the economy. In developed countries, the share of medium-sized businesses is at a comparable level. In Italy, medium-sized firms provide 21% of the total revenue of all firms in the country, and large - 45%. In Sweden, the share of revenue of medium-sized companies is 39%, and large - 44%. In Japanese industry, large firms provide 32% of production, and medium - 25%. In the US, the ratio is completely skewed in favor of big business - 53% of GDP against 13% for the average. In Russia, the revenue of medium-sized companies is related to the revenue of large companies as 45 to 55.

There are industries where medium-sized enterprises are the main producer. These are: food, light, furniture industry - medium-sized business here occupies 80% of this totality of industries, construction - 77% of the entire industry, mechanical engineering - 61%, chemistry and production of non-metallic materials - 82%, science and education - 73% and agriculture - almost 100%. According to the structure of the medium-sized business itself, these six sectors of the economy provide more than 40% of the revenue of medium-sized businesses. Trade has an even larger percentage.

Big business is an association of enterprises around a certain product group, technological chain or a common group of owners and top managers. Its main feature is the ability to change the economic institutions of a certain sector of the economy, the national or even the world economy, to influence the socio-economic environment. The main quantitative indicator of a large business is the volume of sales of goods and services (turnover), since the amount of profit and market capitalization largely depends on the adopted accounting system or the behavior of stock market players.

Large businesses are more durable than medium or small ones. Its monopoly position on the market gives it the opportunity to produce cheap and mass products designed to meet the needs of a wide consumer.

Large Russian business plays the role of the locomotive of the national economy. It is still much more efficient than the bulk of medium and small companies in terms of labor productivity, profitability, and, finally, in terms of growth rates. Due to its special position during the years of reforms, large Russian business has concentrated the main cash flows in its hands. As a consequence, he was able to form fairly strong teams of highly paid, highly skilled managers.

The role of big business in the innovation sphere is especially noticeable: TNCs (transnational corporations) account for two-thirds of all spending on research and development in the US private sector. They also play a leading role in the formation of numerous innovation clusters, such as Silicon Valley in California, Route 128 near Boston, and Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. TNCs are the central link in 79 global research clusters.

It should be noted that the role of large enterprises in the national economy is assessed ambiguously in economic theory. Some scholars believe that today a large firm is the core of the economy of any state, and it is precisely this company that predetermines the main directions and proportions of economic development. According to the opposite point of view, the disadvantages of large firms outweigh the existing advantages and thus cause great harm to the economy as a whole.

As you know, 80% of the money is in the hands of 20% of the world's population. These people started by opening at least their own small business. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, the person who cannot devote 2/3 of the day to himself can safely be considered a slave. Almost the only way to free yourself from such slavery and earn money is to start your own business. You will never get much if you keep working for someone. In order to open your own business, you need, first of all, luck and a very large stock of knowledge. Plus, you need an unusually high capacity for work and perseverance. But first of all, you need the mindset of a billionaire. No matter how insignificant this quality may seem, without it, unfortunately, the probability of success of your business is very small. The mentality of a rich person (common people's "grip") is a state of your consciousness in which you focus all your knowledge, skills, abilities, connections on achieving your goal. In addition to luck, you need to choose the right niche in which you will be comfortable making money and which will be relevant, unique and competitive.

Business relations have firmly entered the lives of people since the transition from the primitive communal system to modern society. Now we cannot imagine an economically developed country without commerce, production, financial institutions (banks, etc.).

All these concepts have become an integral part of the life of modern man. Business relationships arising in these areas are called business. Those. business is a system of relationships that arise between people about the exchange of benefits on a mutually beneficial basis.

Any person or group of people are the owners of certain tangible or intangible goods. Benefits, in this sense, are all that a person may need to satisfy

satisfaction of their needs. These include not only things, but also various kinds of services. The types of goods, as modern science classifies them, are shown in Fig. 1.1.

Given by nature

Production

Free

Consumer

Limited

Investment

Reproducible

irreproducible

Public

Complimentary

non-complimentary

Rice. 1.1. Goods

Business Basics

A person receives from nature a lot of benefits necessary for his life: water, air, land, minerals, etc. They are called natural. However, now people limit themselves to pure natural resources. We transform them into productive goods. Most of the things that surround us in everyday life belong to this type of goods: furniture, computers, books, bread, etc.

The same thing can be used in different ways. The telephone installed at the workplace in the company is used by the employee to perform his job duties. Since these responsibilities are part of the overall functioning of the organization, it can be said that this phone is actually used to create other benefits. It is an example of an investment good. If the same device is installed at home for personal use, then it does not create other benefits and is a consumer good.

Some benefits can be used immediately by a large group of people or even by society as a whole. For example, park areas, public transport, television, roads. All these goods are called public goods. In contrast, those things that are used by one person or a small group (family, firm) are called private goods. It can be cell phones, clothes, home furnishings.

Those goods, the stocks of which can be replenished with the participation of a person, are called reproducible. Paper, cloth, food are examples of this kind of goods. They are constantly produced and used for consumption. Many natural resources are also used by man, but he is not able to replenish their reserves in nature: oil, natural gas, coal, gold. These are examples of non-reproducible benefits.

Air and water are constantly consumed by man in large quantities, but their reserves on Earth do not run out. These things are free goods. However, most of the resources are still limited (territory of the Earth, any household material products, real estate). Thus, the bulk of goods belong to the class of limited.

Things belonging to this type are characterized by their rarity and insufficiency. Rarity refers to the total available amount of a good. For example, diamonds are

rather rare good, which determines their high cost. Meanwhile, wood is much more common. The insufficiency of a good is the ratio between the stocks of the good and the consumption

ness in it. For example, in settlements in the desert, there may be creatures

vat problems with lack of water. Then there is a need

choice between uses.

K. Menger introduced the concept of compli-

the mentality of the good. For example, the production of steel requires ore, fuel and related equipment. These benefits are complementary (mutually complementary). At the same time, ore, flour and furniture currently do not find ways to use it to create other benefits. Those. these benefits are not complimentary. If at any point in time a use is found for such a set of things for common production purposes, then they will become

The classification considered above characterizes, to a greater extent, material goods, i.e. those that are physical and tangible. However, in modern society, intangible goods are gaining more and more weight, which, despite the absence of a physical embodiment, have a certain value. These include labor, information, and services (see Figure 1.2).

Labor is all human actions aimed at creating new benefits, i.e. without labor nothing can be

complimentary.

Information

Rice. 1.2. intangible benefits

Business Basics

created. In this regard, labor has its own value, expressed in wages.

Information also plays an important role in creating wealth and meeting human needs. Without a system of knowledge, it is impossible not only to move forward, but in general to carry out any actions. Information, as a rule, is on a material carrier, but in itself it is intangible. Now humanity has entered the information age, in connection with which information is becoming increasingly valuable and valuable. Some information can cost the acquirer much more than material objects.

Services are direct actions aimed at meeting the needs of a person or company that do not create new products, but change some of the qualities of existing ones. Services are intangible and inseparable from the process of meeting needs, they are produced and consumed at the same time, so they cannot be stored. (Dry cleaning does not change the style or material from which the coat is sewn, but it changes the quality of the good already made, turns dirty into clean, satisfies the needs of citizens.). Services, like goods, are objects of purchase and sale transactions.

The exchange of goods is the whole content of business. The parties participating in this exchange make a deal on mutually beneficial terms. This means that the use value of a good for the acquirer is equal to or higher than the price that he must pay for it.

Consumer value is the amount of loss that a person or company will incur if they do not purchase this product. This indicator can be determined both objectively and subjectively. For example, a company purchases a batch of 10 TVs for the purpose of retail resale (exchanges good money for good goods). The company pays 10,000 rubles a piece, and sells for 15,000 rubles, then it will lose (not receive) 10 x 15 = 150,000 rubles in revenue if it does not purchase this product. This is the consumer value of a batch of televisions. It is defined quite objectively. The firm will make the purchase because its loss from the lost deal (150,000 rubles) is higher than the price of the batch of TVs (100,000 rubles). If the supplier demanded for the same batch an amount of

Topic 1. Concept and types of business

200 thousand rubles, then the company would not enter into such an agreement.

An individual, purchasing goods for personal use, relies on a subjective assessment of the consumer value of goods. If a person sees a music album of his favorite artist in a store, then he does not count his losses from a lost deal, since the pleasure of listening to music is not subject to financial evaluation. The buyer makes a decision based on his personal beliefs.

So, we have explained the key positions of the above definition of business, concerning the concept of benefits and mutually beneficial transactions. However, in modern science, along with the term "business", there are the concepts of "economy" and "entrepreneurship". In fact, they are not synonymous.

ECONOMY

STATE

BUSINESS Firm Fiz. Phys. faces faces Fig. 1.3. Differences between the concepts of "business" and "economy"

Business Basics

Business and economics imply business relationships. But the economy is a more general concept, covering the macro and micro levels of production, exchange, and consumption. It reflects the laws and patterns of development of business relations between people. Business is a specific characteristic of relations between completely defined entities under certain conditions and on the basis of certain legislation. In other words, the term "economy" is used in relation to countries and groups of countries, and "business" characterizes the relationship between individual firms and people.

On fig. 1.3 graphically shows the main difference between business and economics. Relationships between individual subjects of the economy (firms, individuals, etc.) belong to the sphere of business. The totality of all business relations at the macro level is denoted by the term "economy".

In modern legislative acts, the term "business" is not used. Instead, there is the concept of "entrepreneurial activity".

According to the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, entrepreneurial

is an independent activity carried out at one's own risk, aimed at the systematic receipt of profit from the use of property, the sale of goods, the performance of works or the provision of services by persons registered in this capacity in the manner prescribed by law.

In fact, this is business, i.e. from a legislative point of view, business and entrepreneurship are synonymous. However, entrepreneurship management refers to a special style of doing business associated with the desire for high risks and innovation. The opposite style is also distinguished - a leadership approach to doing business, involving a minimum of risks, strict adherence to plans, orientation to internal communications, and not to the external environment. Thus, from the point of view of management science, entrepreneurship is one of the methods of doing business.

In this tutorial, we will start from the legislative position, using the terms "business" and "entrepreneurship" as synonyms.

Topic 1. Concept and types of business

Novice businessmen often confuse these two concepts, let's try to figure it out.

Origins of business and entrepreneurship

Business and entrepreneurship are among the main categories of the economy. It is precisely without these foundations that the state cannot stimulate the economic growth of GNP.

Exploring the category of business, we note that this activity directly affects generating income by selling products and services that are in demand in the market. But business also affects entrepreneurial activity, through the attraction of resources by business entities and the state. The main purpose of this activity is to obtain high profitability from the operation of production.

Business translated from English represents the creation of monetary resources through the reproduction of useful activities, products or the provision of certain types of services.

Entrepreneurship is an independent activity of business entities associated with the likelihood of risks of losses and is aimed at generating income.

Translated from Latin, entrepreneurship means ability to make a profit. Very often, this concept is associated with innovative activity, since the present risk affects various types of economic resources.

The category of entrepreneurship in the regulatory framework of the Russian Federation

For the first time, the category of entrepreneurship is affected by the legislative framework of the RSFSR in the law "On Enterprises and Entrepreneurial Activities" of December 25, 1990.

Clause 1 of the law states that entrepreneurial activity is an initiative independent activity of citizens and their associations aimed at making a profit.

Paragraph 2 notes that this activity is carried out by citizens at your own risk and under property liability within the limits determined by the organizational and legal forms of enterprises.

The concept of entrepreneurial activity is reflected in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation in paragraph 1 of Art. 2 and discloses an independent activity carried out at one's own risk, aimed at constantly obtaining profit from the use of property, the sale of goods, the performance of work or the provision of services to persons registered as such in the manner prescribed by law.

View of economists, the content of the concepts of management, business, entrepreneurship

The first scientist who was seriously interested in entrepreneurship was Adam Smith. 10 years before him, Cotillon studied this issue, he formulated the concept according to which it is the fluctuations between supply and demand in the market that enable business entities to buy goods at a low price and sell them at a high one. It is these participants in market relations that Cotillion called entrepreneurs.

The concept of management is directly related to business management. In management, such means of form and management methods are developed that contribute to efficient production and increase profits.

The difference between business and entrepreneurship

signs	Entrepreneurship	Business
1. The essence of doing business	A business model is being developed through the implementation of new ideas and innovations. Engaged in the production of innovative products	The existing model is taken as the basis for doing business, that is, products are produced according to a ready-made template or slightly modified or supplemented.
2. Degree of risk	The risk is high, as there may be failure or success associated with the introduction of new products, services or equipment to the market.	The risk is much less, since the model taken as a basis has proved its viability.
3. Degree of development	Such activities are carried out by small and medium-sized enterprises.	Typical for state-owned enterprises and corporations.

According to some scholars, entrepreneurship is considered the beginning of a business, and this is the main difference between the concepts, i.e. the concept of business is much broader than entrepreneurship.

The idea as the basis of business in the eyes of ordinary people

The beginning of the development of your business is an idea on which the success of the enterprise depends. This will be especially important for beginners. Entrepreneurs often think about and take already well-functioning templates as a basis, but it should be remembered that a large number of people are already involved in this area, and accordingly there will be high competition in the markets. Very often, business ideas come from a completely different area, you just need to find their common ground or similarities in introducing a business.

Does a businessman or entrepreneur need an idea?

The success of an idea depends on how well it is chosen. Businessmen or entrepreneurs need to choose ideas based on a minimum of risks. Be sure to pay attention to the main advantages and disadvantages of the idea. Implement the business idea that really is profitable.

Why do aspiring businessmen consider the search for an idea a paramount task?

"Good start - half the case pumped out." This is obvious, but many novice businessmen make a number of mistakes when looking for ideas. It makes sense to consider the following:

First: can you sell your business?

If there is no answer to this question, or it is vague, the idea is no good.

Second: innovation.

The most successful business idea is considered to be, according to which a niche in the market is not yet occupied and, accordingly, with the right marketing move, both a businessman and an entrepreneur can earn a significant income in this area.

Worth knowing. Before opening your own business, you should remember the basic postulates of a working business: “The first business is usually created for subsequent sale, and the second in order to receive dividends from it.”

Third: timing of implementation.

It's important to understand. Should take about 2 years so that you can win a tidy sum from the sale of a well-promoted business. If the idea involves a shorter timeframe, most likely the idea has not been thought out or will not bring significant income.

Errors when searching for ideas:

1. Refusal of "banal" ideas. Many people think that the idea itself should sound original. This is wrong. Human needs have not changed for thousands of years. “Bread and circuses” is the postulate of the century, and it is still relevant. The originality of the idea may be to serve the same dish in a new package.
2. Separation from the "ground". The idea is not searched for air, it is searched for specific buyers and a specific entrepreneur. The situation can vary considerably even from region to region. A successful idea here will fail there. Look around you, observe and keep your eyes wide open.

Who comes up with great business ideas?

People with innate entrepreneurial abilities can create business ideas. This type of ability depends on sobriety and the ability to correctly assess the situation.

For example, after coming up with a new idea that will help grow a business, you need to go through the “euphoria stage”, i.e. look at an innovative business proposal from different points of view, then put aside information on this project for a while and check the opening of this business again with a fresh mind.

It is this and is different a successful businessman from a loser.

Attention. Some users can post their ideas on Internet portals and receive good financial resources for this. If a businessman or entrepreneur wants to use these services, they can contact the site administrators and order a business plan for the type of service they like.

How to come up with an idea, ways, ways

Before you start any type of business and generally start looking for an idea, you should:

1. Estimate how many not only financial resources worth spending for development.
2. Evaluate the various factors that may affect the chosen one.
3. Assess your skills in order to understand what exactly a person can do in his business on one's own.
4. You need to understand how effective the idea is, to make people pay for it own resources. Just because you like your product doesn't mean everyone likes it.
5. You should look for a free niche really carefully, i.e. to do this, you need to put yourself in the shoes of a customer who wants to buy these types of goods and services.
6. Choosing a business idea with your start-up capital, many, in fact, require serious investments. For example, growing strawberries all year round.
7. The evaluation of any business idea should be carried out in a sober mind from all sides, i.e. further development of the case should be considered taking into account all possible negative and positive factors.

A little about ideas without initial capital or from scratch

Starting, you need to focus on the following conditions:

• you need to choose the idea in which you can be the best of others;
• the first money is earned in the provision of certain types of services;
• with the help of earned money, you can expand your business, i.e. reinvest funds.

In most cases, you can start only for services, i.e. when a businessman earns on his own and invests own time and skills. With goods, this procedure does not work, since they need to be purchased with your own financial resources.

But not all types of services can develop into a medium or large business - keep in mind! For example, services in the service sector, such as repairing shoes or clothes, will not be able to provide their owner with significant capital, since these resources will immediately go to purchase materials and pay both utility and tax payments.

To expand your business, you need advertising in the initial stages to resolve it, you can use the following techniques that do not require large amounts of money:

• place advertisements about your business through social networks with a request to repost;
• use free classifieds boards;
• print brochures and business cards and distribute them through your friends.

Summing up the above, it should be noted that all innovative business ideas are based on the life and professional experience gained and the diligence of a novice businessman. Return is not easy to get, you have to invest yourself without a trace- you need to be ready for this.

So what's the difference?

The opinion of Vladislav Chelpachenko.

Today, many people start their own business and even successfully develop it, having no idea what business and entrepreneurship are. For example, we recently wrote about the opening of LLC () - the procedure is quite simple, but does not explain the essence and differences of these concepts. To understand the whole essence of business, to understand what entrepreneurship is, as well as to learn hundreds of definitions, it is necessary to study in detail more than a dozen thematic books. This article is aimed at helping businessmen and entrepreneurs who do not have time to study additional literature, but the desire to understand the essence of these concepts still remains unshakable.

In fact, every businessman, whether he is a beginner or a “shark of business”, understands the essence of the concepts under consideration, but is not able to give a concise definition. This sometimes happens because a businessman is a busy person who does not have extra time to study definitions. But in fact, everything turns out to be much simpler:

Business- absolutely any human activity aimed at obtaining maximum profit through the sale of goods and services that are in demand among consumers, as well as an element of a market economy, without which the state cannot develop effectively.

It should be noted that business and entrepreneurship go hand in hand, but the latter should mean something different:

Entrepreneurship- independent activity of any person or group of people directly related to risk. As a rule, such activities are carried out solely under their own responsibility and are aimed at making a profit from the sale of goods and services in accordance with applicable law.

Having familiarized yourself with the definitions, you probably noticed that these concepts are quite difficult to distinguish. Most people believe that business and entrepreneurship are the same thing, but we are in a hurry to dispel this myth by offering you a list of the most significant differences between business and entrepreneurship.

Business and Entrepreneurship: Main Differences

Entrepreneurial activity, exactly like business, can be divided into three degrees in accordance with the “scale” of the sale of goods and services. Therefore, a business can be small, medium or large. This division also applies to entrepreneurship. However, let us return to the features of each concept in order to establish a clear boundary of differences between them.

1. While big business may be one of the foundations of a modern economy, mid-level entrepreneurship can serve as an important indicator of its development and condition.

2. Having become acquainted with the definition of the concept of "entrepreneurship", it is easy to guess that such an activity involves one's own business, launched at the expense of its owner. Therefore, entrepreneurship can be called the basis of business.

3. Considering entrepreneurship in the economic aspect, it should be noted that for the most part such activities are innovative. A business can be 100% copied from another project (an ideal example is shops on every corner that sell the same goods at different prices).

4. Another difference between business and entrepreneurship is that the latter is more dependent on state policy and the state of the state economy as a whole.

Thus, we can single out for ourselves several main conclusions about business and entrepreneurship in order to clearly see and understand their main differences. It is necessary to learn the main differences at least in order to successfully develop your business, and also to understand what factors can, one way or another, affect its success and development.

Key Features of Entrepreneurship

Each project, each case has its own distinctive features. Entrepreneurship also has features that characterize a particular type of activity. Absolutely every entrepreneur should get acquainted with them, because they, in fact, reflect the whole essence of this type of activity.

Before moving on to the list of features that characterize entrepreneurship, it is necessary to understand that the activity of an entrepreneur at the state level is considered as economic activity. By the way, this is why some states are ready to allocate funds to "economic activists" in the form of start-up capital.
Let's return to the characteristics of entrepreneurship as a type of activity:

Belongs to two parties: economic and legal. As mentioned above, every entrepreneur plays an important role in the development of the state economy - this is the economic side. Legal - development of commodity-market relations;

It is an indispensable engine of scientific and technological progress and is aimed not only at making an entrepreneur profit from the sale of goods or services, but also at all kinds of development: the invention of new products, the development of new sources of energy and raw materials (which is quite an important aspect in our time), the use of new developments, etc.;

It is characterized by such features as self-sufficiency, responsibility, initiative, dynamism and independence;

We will not dwell on this in detail, but will immediately move on to the question that worries many people: “Who can become an entrepreneur?”. In fact, absolutely anyone can become one. Of course, there are restrictions and in each state they are different. It should not be forgotten that an entrepreneur is a person who is able to act. If you have such qualities as creativity, the desire to reach new heights, the ability to isolate yourself from unconstructive criticism, etc., then you can become a successful entrepreneur!

Summing up

From this article, you have probably already understood that in fact, businessmen and entrepreneurs do not bear any harm to the state and people, as they used to say about this, if they do everything in accordance with the law. For the state, entrepreneurial initiatives are the “next level”, so it is always ready to help a “drowning” leader if the business was built honestly and really takes part in the development of the state economy.

If you feel the strength and desire to create in yourself, earning good money on it, then business is just for you! Perhaps it is you who will become the author of new approaches to the widespread problem of improving the efficiency of entrepreneurship, taking your business to a new level, as well as improving the “platform” for other creators. Of course, "entrepreneurship" and "risk" are practically synonymous words, but who does not take risks does not drink champagne! Sometimes even the most seemingly crazy idea becomes daily bread for a successful business, so trying and implementing your ideas is, of course, very important. By taking risks, you will overcome the fear that makes most people in our country sick, poor and sad.

It doesn’t matter how many attempts you make before becoming a successful businessman, because the process of achieving a goal is sometimes even more interesting and exciting than the very result of hard work ... And, of course, only the business that is aimed at some kind of global change will be successful, carrying a global idea. You can see for yourself by looking around. You and your business should be driven not only by the desire to “warm up” by making the desired fortune. In business, the idea, the secret meaning and essence of all the activities of an entrepreneur, which should be aimed at creation, and not at destruction, is extremely important.

CHAPTER 1. THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY AS A BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

This chapter is necessary for the reader for several purposes. First, here, in the most general terms, a theoretical point of view on business, its forms, goals and role in the Russian economy is revealed. Without familiarity with the main directions of modern enterprise theory, a businessman will not be able to understand the recommendations (sometimes contradictory) offered in the literature, nor form his own point of view on the essence of business. In this book, the authors proceed from the belief that business - under optimal conditions - is mobile and flexible, and the enterprise is a single holistic and purposeful organism. If the reader and the authors have at least elements of a common position on this matter, we can assume that contact has been established and it is worth moving on. Secondly, it gives basic ideas about the economic environment in which Russian enterprises and entrepreneurs operate. In a concentrated form, those features and elements of the environment are presented that a business person in modern Russia will inevitably come into contact with or is already in contact with. The reader will learn for what purposes a business exists and what functions it performs in society, how this business interacts with other participants in the economic process, what “bricks” a business is made of, what legal and ethical standards it has to obey for its own good. Finally, the reader will be able to get acquainted with various types of managers and try to understand what type of leader he or his boss is.

1.1. Essence, goals and functions of business

Business(from the Old English "bisig" - active, busy, business) plays a decisive role in the modern economy. It is to business that society owes almost all the economic benefits that determine the conditions for the existence of a modern person - from housing and clothing to food and intellectual leisure. Business is being modified, taking on various forms, transforming and evolving, attracting new generations of young people who give the best years of their lives to business. The concept of "businessman" as a person who devotes himself to the production of goods or services in the conditions of market relations is currently something of a title. Not every employee can call himself a businessman, not every production process can be called a business, and not every business is useful to society. Nevertheless, business is the core of the modern economy; without it, the economy loses dynamism, adaptability, and sometimes even target orientation.

The business sphere has a colossal intellectual and creative potential, which can be revealed both in directions that are desirable for a particular person or society, and in undesirable ones. Society sometimes has to contain and direct the potential of business, while sacrificing the ability to meet current needs in favor of meeting future demands.

The essence of business is the combination of material, financial, labor and information resources in order to produce goods intended for sale to other economic agents - enterprises, organizations, citizens. Such a connection can be short-term or long-term (this is associated with the stability of demand, and with the possibility of diverting resources, and with other aspects). If we are talking about a long-term connection of resources, there is, as a rule, organization or an organizational unit, the functioning of which is subject to certain, relatively stable rules and regulations, i.e. company. If the connection of resources is made for a certain period, is relatively short-term, more often they talk about project.

The same business can be implemented in different enterprises sequentially in time or in parallel. One and the same enterprise can become an arena for the operation of various businesses. A business may stop with the departure of a businessman, or it may be successfully continued by other people. In other words, the boundaries and essence of business cannot but be vague, variable, and sometimes the identification of various economic phenomena as generated by one business is a significant difficulty (sometimes such identification is carried out by law enforcement agencies in order to combat violations of laws).

The role of business in society can be clearly illustrated by the example of the role of the enterprise as the most sustainable form of business. Enterprise role (or firms- these concepts are used in the book as synonyms) is multifaceted, and its essence is multifunctional. According to the views of some economists, the main purpose of the enterprise is to serve as a source of income for the owners (shareholders); others believe that the essence of the enterprise is in the production of products, the satisfaction of the material needs of society; still others, speaking of the enterprise, have in mind its function of providing employment. Supporters of an integrated approach note a number of additional significant functions of the enterprise in modern society.

In table. Table 1 lists the economic agents that are most closely associated with enterprises: the population and its individual groups, other enterprises, research and development organizations, banks, educational institutions, tax authorities, federal and local executive and legislative authorities, federal industry regulation bodies .

Table 1. Mutual expectations of the enterprise and various subjects of the economy

Economic entities	Expectations on the part of the subject	Expectations from this enterprise
The population and its separate groups (actual, potential and former employees of the enterprise, members of their families, owners, innovators, owners of financial resources, other citizens, society as a whole)	Employment Livelihood The possibility of self-realization in the process of work The possibility of self-realization in a team Respect from the team Material and moral support in emergency situations Demand for organizational and technological innovations Taking into account the interests of society	Attracting labor force Demand for goods and services of the enterprise Innovation offer Attracting funds from the public through securities Dedication of employees to corporate interests Recognition of the social value of the enterprise Emergency support
Other enterprises (actual and potential partners, competitors, owners, owners of new technologies, free financial and other resources)	Demand for goods and services of another enterprise Recruitment of personnel who have gained experience in this enterprise Receiving income from funds invested in this enterprise Demand for new technologies of another enterprise	Demand for goods and services of this enterprise Recruitment of personnel who have gained work experience in another enterprise Receiving income from funds invested in another enterprise Demand for new technologies of this enterprise
	Demand for banking services	Deposit and settlement and credit services
Scientific research and development organizations	Demand for R&D	R&D offer
Educational establishments	Demand for graduates	Specialists' offer
Tax authorities	Timely payment of taxes	Providing tax incentives and deferrals
This enterprise		Creation and expansion of the socio-economic potential of the enterprise development Consolidation and improvement of technological skills, transfer of production experience
Federal and local executive and legislative authorities	Ensuring sufficient tax revenues for the formation of federal and local budgets	Budget financing of the enterprise Creation and maintenance of the external conditions of the enterprise
Federal bodies of industry regulation	Implementation of the sectoral policy of the state	Information support Coordination with other industries

For the sake of completeness, this list also includes the enterprise itself, which also imposes certain target requirements on the course and results of its activities. In general, they can be characterized as the presence at each moment of time of the socio-economic capacity that ensures the future functioning of the enterprise. At the same time, the concept of potential includes (with certain priorities) both the assets of the enterprise and the positive characteristics of its market position, accumulated experience, etc.

The essence of the relations of an enterprise (or business as a whole) with other economic and social entities can be generally characterized by the concept expectations. The enterprise is presented as one of the nodes of a multidimensional web that connects various institutional agents. The connecting threads are various expectations, including expectations in relation to this enterprise. These expectations sometimes take the form of suggestions or demands; accordingly, the enterprise also expects other entities to show demand for products or securities, supply factors, etc. Almost every enterprise, having barely appeared, is, as it were, in the focus of numerous expectations on the part of various economic entities (in relation to the Horns and Hooves enterprise, this phenomenon is vividly described in The Golden Calf by I. Ilf and E. Petrov). For structures of mutual expectations, the walls of the enterprise are not an obstacle: individual subsystems and employees of the enterprise also associate their expectations with external objects and are the recipients of their expectations. Sometimes these expectations are formulated explicitly (say, on the part of the employee when hiring), sometimes they are hidden (again, remember the real reason for the creation of "Horns and Hooves"). The degree of proximity of the vectors of external and internal expectations largely affects the fate and success of the enterprise. In general, there are two wait configurations: one reflects the expectations of agents aimed at the enterprise and inside it, the other reflects the expectations of the enterprise from the corresponding subjects. Among the network recipients of enterprise expectations are suppliers, buyers, enterprises that are technology recipients and donors, research and development organizations, authors of organizational and technological innovations, investors, financial and credit institutions, tax authorities, etc. (it would be useful to mention in this list and "roofs" - criminal formations that provide the same criminal, and sometimes economic, security of enterprises).

The table below shows how diverse the functions of enterprises are. Some of them are social, and even a simple listing of them shows that they underlie the existence of society. In fact, the possibility of self-realization in work, as well as self-respect through respect from the team, expresses fundamental human needs and rights. Other functions of the enterprise stimulate at the microeconomic level the movement of material, financial, information flows, the movement of labor and implement the action of the economic forces of competition.

Thus, society, represented by its various agents, sets its own expectations for each business. To the extent that a business can implement them, to that extent it will be able to continue its existence and development. In other words, a business (and, consequently, the enterprise that implements it, and the businessman who organized this enterprise) bears responsibility before the society represented by subjects experiencing reasonable expectations in relation to this business. The streams of mutual obligations and responsibilities generated by business play a decisive role in shaping the very foundation of society.

The essence of business as a process and enterprise as an organizational form of its manifestation is the subject of intensive study in both popular and scientific literature. In order to give recommendations on the creation, selection and implementation of strategic business lines, it is advisable to summarize the main positive conclusions of modern microeconomic theory in relation to the functioning of an enterprise. For a generalized description of an enterprise, it is desirable to understand how it is reflected in a particular theoretical concept:
1) the composition and influence of decision-making factors in the sphere of production and sale of products, as well as reproduction processes;
2) organizational and functional structure of the enterprise and the mechanism of relationships between organizational units;
3) production and technological structure of the enterprise;
4) the system of relationships between the employees of the enterprise, its managers and owners.

From a theoretical standpoint, an enterprise model is usually presented in the form of three components: a description of the enterprise as a system (“enterprise concept”); descriptions of factors and criteria for making strategic decisions at the enterprise; description of the behavior of the enterprise in the business and administrative environment, as well as in the space of economic indicators.

In economics, there are several basic versions of the theory (model) of an enterprise that describe its emergence, functioning and/or liquidation using a small number of fundamental prerequisites. In each of them, the enterprise is considered from a certain point of view, with an emphasis on certain features of the object under study. The following five variants of the theoretical model of the enterprise have been most fully developed: neoclassical, institutional, evolutionary, entrepreneurial and "agent" theory of the firm (also called the concept of "boss - subordinate" or "master - agent"). The integration theory and the "survival model" of the enterprise are also known.

neoclassical model(V.M. Galperin et al., 1994), an enterprise considers a firm as an integral object that converts initial material, labor and financial resources into products using a set of certain technologies, as well as attracting these resources to production. The "portrait" of the enterprise is presented in the form of a production function, expressing the technological and economic dependence of production results on the input factors. At the same time, it is believed that the formation of the composition and the choice of the volumes of factors are within the competence of the management and can be carried out to a wide extent on a fairly transparent factor market from an informational point of view. "Behavior" of the enterprise - the choice of the volume and structure of attracted resources and the price of manufactured products in such a way that the profit of the enterprise (or another indicator of its activity) is maximum. It is believed that if an enterprise does not seek to maximize profits, then sooner or later it will be defeated in the competition and will be excluded from the number of market agents in the course of natural selection implemented by the mechanism of market competition.

In accordance with this understanding of the role and functions of the enterprise, the study of enterprises as subjects of a market economy in the 1950s and 1970s was concentrated in two main directions. The first is the study of the technological properties and parameters of firms, i.e. the proportions of the replacement of labor, capital, means and objects of production, the determination of such proportions that would ensure the minimization of costs. The second is an analysis of the organization of various markets, their structures and the impact of the latter on the competitive behavior of the firm. The neoclassical idea of ​​the enterprise is still the basic one, accepted in most countries of the world, it is on it that the training courses of micro- and macroeconomics are built. At the same time, the basic neoclassical model has recently undergone a number of changes aimed at including in the analysis the phenomena of non-price competition, the impact of the geographical location of the firm on the prices of products and resources, and seasonal fluctuations in production on employment, as well as taking into account the problems of optimization and inventory management and etc. There is also a whole range of competing, complementing and replacing each other options for the firm's objective function in different circumstances: in addition to profit maximization, there is maximization of sales, gross income, income per employee, shareholder income, various multifactorial approximations of the utility function, strategic goals, etc. All these modifications were natural reactions to the inconsistencies regularly encountered by researchers between the conclusions of neoclassical theory and the practice of firms.

IN institutional concept(Coase, 1993) the approach to the enterprise is based on the distinction between two types of production and economic relations: between employees or divisions of the same enterprise and relations between economic entities that do not belong to the same enterprise. In other words, the production of products at a given enterprise is opposed to free purchase - sale in the factor market, the mechanism of administrative control - to the mechanism of market interactions.

This difference is manifested primarily in the fact that the use of the mechanism of free market pricing is associated with some specific costs for this exchange option. These costs include the costs of obtaining price information (information costs), as well as the costs of carrying out market transactions (transaction costs). The mechanism of administrative regulation of exchanges is free from both types of costs, although it is associated with costs to compensate for administrative and other expenses associated with the operation of the enterprise. If the firm's product occupies a stable place in the structure of commodity flows, then the transaction costs associated with the acquisition of the necessary materials and equipment in the case of the formation of the firm are lower than in the production of the same product without the organization of the firm, which explains the existence of enterprises. A firm within which the market mechanism has been replaced by a mechanism for generating the application of prescriptions does not incur such costs (although, of course, it incurs management costs different from the costs of using the market mechanism). Thus, the firm as a production organization arises where and insofar as the non-market mechanism is more effective than the market one.

The "behavior" of the enterprise is characterized by the peculiarities of concluding and executing contracts with external organizations and employees, as well as by the ways in which the internal administrative mechanism is organized.

Thus, the focus of institutional theory is the explanation of the existence and coexistence of diverse forms of business enterprises, the analysis of the limits of their growth from the standpoint of efficiency, possible solutions to the problems of employee motivation, organization, control, planning, etc. In this sense, institutional theory can be considered as a link between neoclassical and managerial theories. However, this "bridge" is not too wide yet, and neoclassical and institutional theories still provide different models of the enterprise.

IN evolutionary theories(Nelson, Winter, 1982; Makarov, 1997) the firm is considered as one of the objects in the environment of similar objects, which can be likened to a biological population. The behavior of an enterprise is primarily determined by the relationship between members of this population, and secondly, by some internal characteristics of the object, which, first of all, in this theory include established rules for making decisions in response to certain internal or external influences. It is believed that during the operation of the enterprise, in continuous interaction with the “population”, each enterprise develops certain traditions and decision-making procedures, algorithms for responding to changes in the external and internal environment. According to this concept, these rules (“routines”) ultimately determine the face of the firm, the difference between one enterprise and another in the competitive struggle. According to the “evolutionists”, it is the established rules, and not the blind desire to maximize profits in all situations and under all conditions, that determine the nature of decisions made. These rules are not fixed once and for all, they evolve in accordance with the changing business environment of the enterprise and bear the imprint of both the personalities of the firm's leaders and the nature of relationships with partners from other enterprises. The “behavior” of a firm is the direct and evolutionary response of a firm to influences from the business, administrative and technological environment due to “routines”.

The evolutionary model of the enterprise, therefore, recognizes, in contrast to the neoclassical one, that enterprises do not have a single criterion for the optimality of their decisions. This criterion is strictly individual in nature, reflecting not only individual preferences, but also the historical experience of the company, its successes and failures. It is clear that we are not talking about a constant, as in neoclassical theory, but about a dynamic criterion that changes from period to period.

Characteristic of the evolutionary concept is a systematic idea of ​​the enterprise as a dual object: on the one hand, being a member of the business community (“population”) and experiencing all the consequences of the evolution of this community, on the other hand, having its own traditions in determining the directions of activity , volumes and proportions of involved factors. The issues of formation and (to a large extent) liquidation of the enterprise do not fit completely into the framework of the evolutionary model. So far, there are no grounds to talk about its strong connection with the neoclassical theory of the firm.

Entrepreneurial model firms (Hisrich, Peters, 1989; Problems of management..., 1992) is based on the idea of ​​the enterprise as a sphere of application of entrepreneurial initiative and resources available to the entrepreneur or available to attract. Of course, not all businesses are entrepreneurial, and in this sense, entrepreneurial theory has a more limited focus than other types of theories of the firm. At the same time, the number of entrepreneurial firms is many times greater than the number of other enterprises, so the intersection between the set of objects of entrepreneurial and the set of objects of other theories is quite large. At the forefront of this concept are the relationship between the entrepreneur and his business. It is believed that at the heart of an entrepreneurial business and at the center of such an enterprise is the figure of an entrepreneur - an independent, active, energetically striving for success, risk-averse, persistent, adaptive, self-confident person who knows how to use contradictory circumstances for his own purposes. However, in modified versions of the entrepreneurial concept (Tropman, Morningstar, 1989), they do not at all consider it obligatory that such a person be in the enterprise in the singular and in the role of director, and consider the impact on the behavior of the enterprise of the activities of “macro-entrepreneurs” who manage the external relations of the enterprise with other organizations. , business, administrative and technological environment, population; "meso-entrepreneurs" who manage schemes and material and financial flows in the internal activities of the enterprise, including innovative activities; “micro-entrepreneurs”, whose sphere of activity is the micro-links of production, up to the organization of jobs. In principle, any enterprise needs entrepreneurs of all three types; for the successful operation of the enterprise, it is only important that each of the potential entrepreneurs make their own conscious and informed choice between these types of roles.

It should be emphasized that in the entrepreneurial version of the theory of the company, the head of the enterprise under any conditions remains an entrepreneur - a person whose goal and scope of professional activity is the organization of the production process (“a new connection of resources”, as they sometimes say) to satisfy an existing or created need with the help of an entrepreneur.

The behavior of an enterprise in this model is the result of the action and interaction of entrepreneurs at all three levels. The relationship between entrepreneurs in the enterprise, its employees and owners is especially important.

The agency model of the firm also provides some description of the activities of the enterprise (more precisely, the relationship between its owners and managers) (Jensen, Meckling, 1976). According to this concept, owners who do not work at the enterprise as managers, as a rule, do not have access to the information that the manager has. In principle, the owner can acquire some of this information, but this may require significant expenses on the part of the owner for the organization of internal and external monitoring. Another part of the information, related, for example, to the individual labor intensity of a hired manager, will remain unobservable (more precisely, the difference between the maximum possible under given conditions and the actual intensity of managerial labor is unobservable). In addition, the relationship between the costs of the manager's efforts and the efficiency of the firm is also assumed to be non-deterministic. Under these conditions, the activation of the manager by paying him, depending on the efficiency of the enterprise, can lead to a variety of qualitative effects with certain combinations of quantitative parameters of the situation. For example, in some cases (Tirole, 1988) it is more costly for the owner to intensify the manager's effort than to accept a low level of manager's intensity. With regard to domestic enterprises of the present period, the scope of the adequacy of the agency model is limited. The relationship between the owner and the hired manager of an enterprise, if it plays a role in describing the behavior of the enterprise, cannot be described with any precision in terms of this theory. The reasons lie in the extremely significant proportion of those connections between the interests of the manager and the interests of the owner, which can be characterized using the military term as "hazing". In other words, in Russia, under the conditions prevailing at enterprises, the activity of a manager solely in the interests of a particular owner seems extremely unlikely. In this regard, the managerial applications of the "master-worker" model would also require a significant refinement of the agency theory.

IN integration theory enterprise, an attempt is made to comprehensively take into account the specifics of the enterprise as a relatively integral and independent socio-economic system that integrates in time and space the processes of production (sale) of products and the reproduction of resources (Kleiner, 1997). The link between these processes and the "portrait" of the company is its potential. – a set of resources and capabilities that determine the expected characteristics of its development under certain real scenarios of environmental change. The main object of decision-making is the distribution of resources and efforts of the company between capacity building and its use, between reproduction and production, between the present and the future. In a certain sense, this concept reflects all those aspects of the enterprise that form the basis of the approaches listed above.

A certain contribution to the development of the firm model in relation to Russian enterprises in the transition period was made by the so-called theory enterprise survival(Ikes, Rieterman, 1994). According to this theory, which in a certain sense is “anti-evolutionary”, an enterprise in the transition period is unable to adapt to constant changes in the external environment, primarily to fluctuations in the range and production volumes, as well as the financial condition of suppliers and consumers. The connections between the elements of the economic "population" do not support the stability of its existence as a whole, so that the main task of enterprises as a whole is survival. Therefore, evolution that is smooth and coordinated with the external environment is impossible, and the decision-making rules at the enterprise, barely formed, collapse under the pressure of stressful situations in which the enterprise and its management all too often find themselves. In these conditions, the leaders of the enterprise make decisions, guided only by short-term personal gain and the desire to strengthen their dominant and uncontrolled position.

Let's summarize. Each of these model concepts in a descriptive manner considers the enterprise from a certain perspective, not including many other, even related processes, into the scope of study. Nevertheless, considering the given variants of the enterprise model in a developed market economy in a regulatory manner, i.e. From the standpoint of the requirements for enterprises, the fulfillment of which in market conditions provides chances for long-term sustainable development, the following components of these requirements can be distinguished.

1. The enterprise must adequately respond to changes in the market situation (including changes in prices for products and factors of production), forming its volume-nomenclature and pricing policy. You should strive to maximize the difference between income and expenses. In an aphoristic form, this principle can be stated as follows: “There are no too large expenses, there are too few incomes” (neoclassical model).

2. For sustainable operation in the market, an enterprise must create conditions for the comparative minimization of intra-company transaction costs, facilitating the process of searching for external counterparties. One should strive to optimize the size of the firm, taking into account the factors of manageability, employee motivation and synergistic benefits (institutional model).

3. The system of intra-company decision-making, its invariable features and dynamics should be the object of close attention of the manager. The optimal balance between the stability of the rules for making strategic decisions and the flexibility of making tactical decisions should be ensured. One of the main tasks of the enterprise is to create harmonious conditions for the relationship of the enterprise with the economic and administrative environment, to ensure the coordinated evolution of the enterprise and the environment, to counteract the lag of internal changes from external ones (evolutionary theory).

4. A necessary condition for the effective operation of an enterprise in a free market economy is the presence of a positive purposeful motivation of its employees - both production workers and managers. For many people, such motivation is possible only if conditions are created for the realization of their entrepreneurial qualities. Entrepreneurship within the enterprise (intrapreneurship) or in the “integration zone” of the enterprise should be ensured. A very important problem is the convergence of the interests of the head of the enterprise and the team, overcoming the gap between the behavior of the director as an individual and as a representative of a legal entity (entrepreneurial model).

5. The relationship between the management and the owners of the enterprise must be coordinated with the interests of the business as an ongoing process. The search for the optimal relationship between material interest and the professional development of a manager is a very complex and important task. The asymmetry of information in the triangle "employee-manager-owner" creates the prerequisites for an undesirable decrease in the productivity of workers and managers, a decrease in the efficiency of the use of the owner's funds (agency model).

6. The preservation and development of an enterprise as an independent economic entity requires a certain balance between production and sales and reproduction and supply processes. Neglecting the restoration of internal production resources and favorable conditions for the enterprise of the external socio-economic and environmental environment threatens both the efficiency of the enterprise in the medium term and its existence as a whole (integration theory).

Summarizing the above, we can conclude that the overall goal of the process of improving the enterprise itself and its activities is to create a situation where the relationship between the enterprise and related socio-economic and institutional entities, including the enterprise itself, meets mutual expectations. Of course, the degree of realization of the expectations addressed to the enterprise by other economic and social structures cannot be the same. At different stages of the socio-economic development of society, its various subjects present more or less urgent and more or less priority requirements to the enterprise. The subordination and priority of various requirements for an enterprise in the conditions of its independence are determined, on the one hand, by the direct influence of society, and on the other hand, by the enterprise's own goals.

Here it is necessary to emphasize the conceptual difference between the concepts of “the goal of the entrepreneur (owner)”, and “the goal of the enterprise”, “the goal of the business”. Under the purpose of the entrepreneur(or the owner) is understood as the totality of his intentions and interests as an individual, designed for entrepreneurial activity. Purpose of the enterprise- this is a conditional analytical concept intended for a compact description of the factors of the enterprise's behavior in the economic and administrative environments. If an enterprise is identified with a certain legal entity, then it makes sense to introduce a special concept " business purpose”, meaning by business ongoing production under different legal entities. Thus, the goal of the entrepreneur as the head of the enterprise should be considered separately from the goal of the enterprise, since a particular enterprise can only be a means of realizing the personal interests of the entrepreneur (owner). In particular, such an event as the liquidation of an enterprise may meet the goals of the entrepreneur, but not meet the goals of the enterprise.

As a rule, an enterprise cannot be identified either with its head (director), or with the owner, or with the labor collective, or with a specific legal entity. An enterprise is a real “living” system, the functioning of which involves both individuals and tangible assets - fixed assets, capital, etc., and entities that lie outside the enterprise: suppliers, buyers of products, etc. Therefore, one of the first tasks that every enterprise has to decide when developing or revising its business strategy is the question of self-identification of the enterprise, clarifying its boundaries in the economic, administrative, technological, institutional and other environments. After defining these boundaries, strategic business planning within the selected boundaries (strategic business zones) becomes of particular importance.

In the conditions of uncertainty of the external and internal environment of the enterprise, the strategy acts not just as one of the forms or functions of managing the organization, but as a key element of its existence as a system integrator. It can be said, exaggerating, that not business acts as an object of strategic development (management), but socially significant strategic development is implemented with the help of this business. Strategic planning turns from a management function into an object, and business - from an object into a platform for realizing its strategic purpose.

Mission business as a phenomenon Thus, it is connected, on the one hand, with the support of the processes of self-realization of its participants, on the other hand, with the implementation of the processes of social development. Questions of definition specific business missions will be covered in chapter 4.

Since business is inseparable from the socio-economic environment of Russia, and the vital activity of this environment, in turn, is supported by business, it becomes necessary to consider the specifics of the Russian business environment, determine its characteristic features and their impact on the activities of enterprises in today's Russia.

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