Assignment #1: The Business Environment

Mondith Sreng

Professor Jane Osburn

BUS 100 Introduction to Business

1/22/20122

The role of business in an economy is involved in any type of activity that provides goods, services, or both to consumers in an attempt to earn a profit. Business drives up the standard of living of quality and quantity of goods and services available to a population and contributing to the higher quality of life in which is overall sense of well-being experienced by either an individual or a group. Business also helps raise the standard of living through taxes. However businesses do not only provide the products and services that people acquire, but they as well provide job opportunities that people need to survive nowadays.

The evolution of business has changed a lot over the past 200 – 300 years. American businesses were divided into five distinct ears, which created a huge impact in our economy. There were The Industrial Revolution, The Entrepreneurship Era, The Production Era, Marketing Era, and The Relationship Era. The Industrial Revolution was a period of rapid industrialization during the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s. Factories hired a large amount of mediocre workers who worked only on limited number of tasks. The Entrepreneurship Era was during the second half of the 1800s. Where entrepreneurs came about building business empires, they were raising mass amounts of wealth. However many also dominated their markets, which in fact put out some of their competitors, raising their prices, abusing workers, and destroying the environment. That’s when the government stepped in and passing laws which regulated businesses and protecting consumers and workers. During the 1900s The Production Era is where many major businesses focused on refining the production process by creating faster and better efficiencies. Jobs became even