ABSTRACT
This chapter examines several prominent views of business as an organization: business may be identified with corporations or it may be understood in terms of a theory, the transaction costs theories of the firm. It argues that both are deficient conceptions of business. Consideration will then be given to business as an activity. The chapter also argues that rules define the scope of business activities. Activities that violate these rules are not merely unethical, they are not business at all. The chapter explores how these rules provide the bases for what business is: attempting to profit by producing a good or service for trade. It examines the implications of stakeholder theory for our very understanding of business as an activity. In the business ethics literature, and in popular critiques, the organizational structure overwhelmingly identified as business is the large publicly traded corporation. Business exists because certain normative rules classify the actions that define the practice of business.
