<p>I’ve always wanted to go into business, and my friend asked me why I wanted to the other day. Sadly, I couldn’t give her a reasonable answer, besides the fact that many people in business have decent salaries. Just wanted to know why everyone here wants to study or go into business!</p>
<p>Simple…I am interested.</p>
<p>Without business this world cannot exist. Without business professionals this world cannot exist.</p>
<p>I find the core and heart of business to be accounting although I am a MIS business major. Accounting is the language of business. In accounting you will need a accounting degree at some point. Other business majors like marketing, human resources and management you can get there with a different degree or through experience. It is also the easiest to find a job in accounting so I highly suggest this major.</p>
<p>There are basically three things people do for a living:</p>
<p>(1) They work for a governmental body</p>
<p>(2) They work for a non-profit entity</p>
<p>(3) They work for a private business, or start their own business, or invest in a business.</p>
<p>The study of Business looks at how the third of these (which is about where 80% of all people work) can perform their duties better and achieve their goal–which is to make a profit for their owners (stockholders or individuals). </p>
<p>Business is also very closely related to public administration which looks at how the other two groups can achieve their goals.</p>
<p>Now it is true that you can major in political science to go into government, and it is true that you can major in sociology to go into non-profit work, and it is true that you can go into engineering or fine arts or the dance/theatre field to figure out what product or service a company should provide. But you have to go into business to understand how the product/service is to be financed, sold, promoted, produced, accounted for, and delivered profitably. And you also need to take business to find out how to report all this to the government and to figure out how much tax is to be paid on any profits.</p>
<p>There’s an old saying: “Whatever they are talking about, they are talking about money”. There’s a lot of truth to this–and it is why we study making money. When a company ceases to make a profit, that company eventually perishes–and the products and services it provided cease to be. In the long run, business provides a better standard of living to most people.</p>
<p>If you look at history, you’ll see that the richest man who ever lived (adjusting for inflation) was John D. Rockefeller, whose net worth when he died in 1937 would be the equivalent of $190 billion in 2007 dollars. Yet, John D. Rockefeller lived in a time when there was no TV, no air conditioning, no internet, no cell phones, no video games, when air travel was inconvenient, when cars could only go about 40 miles per hour tops, when refrigerators with freezers were rare, when it took months to cross oceans, and indoor plumbing was still inconvenient–and even for most of his life, when there were no electric lights in most parts of the country. One could argue that the average person in the US today lives much better than John D. Rockefeller ever lived, despite all his wealth–and the major reason for this is not just the technological inventions, but also the business infrastructure that allowed them all to be spread to the average person here in the US. Nowadays that infrastructure is going global–and one could easily argue that this is benefitting people throughout the world.</p>
<p>Thus, I guess the reason I would say that I studied business was to determine how to improve the standard of living throughout the world. What was/is your reason? </p>
<p>P.S. Some businesses also focus on improving their communities and the lives of their employees, but unfortunately, that has never been a major goal of most businesses. Hopefully, that will be seen as at least a minor goal of business as the course curriculum changes over time in business schools.</p>