What You Need to Know about Business

Business is big. Actually, it's often small and medium-sized too. But the point is that it matters – a lot.

This book is designed to answer all those confusing questions that flit through your mind when you get to the business pages of the paper, and stop you being embarrassed in job interviews.

It explains the things you really need to know about business, and will tell you:

• What the point of business is
• How what happens in the economy affects real businesses
• What the law means for business
• Finance, accounting, shares, bonds etc and other big numbers
• How companies grow and why the merge (even though most mergers fail)
• What HR departments actually do all day
• Time management, motivation, leadership, communication skills and all the other skills you'll need if you want to know what the view's like from the CEO's office

After reading it, you'll smile knowingly whenever the advantages of outsourcing, balanced scorecards or Porter's 5 Ps come up in polite conversation.

Introduction 1

1 What Is Business? 11

2 The Economy 35

3 The Laws 79

4 The Numbers 103

5 The Strategy 137

6 The Functions 167

7 The Skills 199

8 Success 227

Acknowledgements 245

Index 247

"This is an excellent introduction to the key concepts of business for anyone wanting a basic understanding." (The Market, May 2011) Roger Trapp has written about businesses of all sorts and sizes for more than two decades.?He is business writer for the Independent and Independent on Sunday, and also writes for Director magazine and Management Today.?He is the author of two books, My Biggest Mistake (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1992) and Blunderboss (Capstone, 1999).