Business is a subject vast enough to fill a dozen encyclopedias without exhausting its many fascinating topics. As a dynamic process, furthermore, commerce constantly expands into new areas. It evolves so swiftly that contributors to an encyclopedia must work vigorously to keep their articles up to date.

An editor might attempt to rein in the burgeoning body of business knowledge through an organizational scheme based on disciplines such as marketing, production, finance, and human resource management. Any resulting sense of closure would be illusory, however. The study of business constantly breaks out of internally defined structures to blend into the surrounding culture.

Commerce has its own rich history, complete with contending schools of historians. Chronicles of prominent corporations and lives of business leaders often attract a wide, general readership. As an indication of the depth of scholarship in the field, Cambridge University Press in 1991 published a 368-page book entitled, Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens.

There is a distinct language of business, or rather a number of dialects. Used by people who deal in certain goods or services, or even who work at particular corporations, they range from frightful technobabble to positively poetic expression. Advertising jingles and slogans periodically leap from the airwaves into everyday speech: "Does she or doesn't she?" "We try harder." "Where's the beef?" "Just do it."

Business even contributes to the arts, notwithstanding a common perception that the two are somehow antithetical. The very best examples of industrial design have found their way into museums of modern art, while consumer advertising has provided inspiration for painters, writers, and composers of popular music. Also in the popular vein, comic strips have long tapped a vein of humor with which millions can readily identify, from Blondie and Grin and Bear It to Dilbert. Bawdy humor would be much poorer without the stock character of the traveling salesman.

Most business writing tends to be utilitarian, but a few classics, such as How to Win Friends and Influence People, have exerted extraordinary influence, even if they do not rank as literary masterpieces. Writing about business, on the other hand, sometimes reaches the level of high art, as in the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and Tom Wolfe. Death of a Salesman and The Music Man are among classics of the stage that reflect intimate knowledge of the business world.

Indeed, the compartmentalization represented by the cable television business channels and business sections in bookstores is woefully artificial. An anthropological or historical study that neglected a civilization's commercial dimension would present a fatally distorted picture. For that matter, trade is an element essential to understanding societies in earlier stages of development, such as the pre-Columbian and Pacific Island cultures. To appreciate how profoundly business influences the world view even of people who accord it little conscious attention, let us consider its impact on several basic concepts and preoccupations.

TIME

Agriculture can claim early credit for attention to the division and measurement of time, which was essential to planting crops at the optimal point in the growing cycle. Religion likewise played a role in defining time, with certain observances assigned to particular days or hours. The demands of business, however, greatly increased the need for precision. Fair payment of wages required reliable clocks to measure the periods worked. As railroads spread out to transport commercial goods, as well as people, accurate timetables were required to avoid catastrophic locomotive collisions. Standard time replaced the previous practice of each locality determining for itself when noon occurred.

Holidays, too, had their roots in agriculture and religion, with patriotic commemorations adding to the list. The resulting hodgepodge has undergone a good deal of rationalization to accommodate commercial needs. Despite sentimental attachment to traditional dates, business considerations have often restructured the calendar. Toward the end of the Great Depression, for example, President Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from its traditional date, the final Thursday in November, to the third Thursday. Merchants rejoiced in the lengthening of the traditional Thanksgiving-to-Christmas shopping season, although Congress ultimately undid Roosevelt's reform. Later, threeday weekends became the norm, producing shifts in the observance of certain holidays. They made better business sense than oneor two-day rump weeks following midweek holidays. Recently, Europe's economic integration has created pressure to discontinue the closing of stock exchanges for various national holidays, in order to ensure continent-wide trading for a satisfactory number of sessions each year.

GEOGRAPHY

Business provided much of the impetus to the Age of Exploration. Most famously, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World because he believed that by sailing west from Europe, he could find a more costeffective route to spice-producing regions of the Orient. Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to India to help traders avoid duties imposed on the overland route by the Ottoman Turks. Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation grew out of Spain's desire to break a Portuguese cartel in the spice trade.

Not only were new regions discovered in pursuit of business objectives, but they were sometimes relocated for similar reasons. For instance, a 1529 world map by the cartographer Diogo Ribeiro, which was otherwise impressively accurate for its time, intentionally showed the Moluccas too far to the east. This deliberate distortion served the interests of Ribeiro's employer, the King of Spain. It placed the commercially important spice-growing islands safely within Spain's sphere of influence, as determined by a Spanish-Portuguese treaty that divided the earth into hemi spheres. Commerce changed the face of the earth again in the 1860s, when California governor Leland Stanford, Jr. ordered the state geographer to widen the Sierra Nevada mountain range by 24 miles. Stanford was a partner in the Central Pacific Railroad, which was laying track eastward from Sacramento to create a transcontinental rail link with the Union Pacific. The federal government had authorized payments three times as great for construction on mountainous ground as on flat land, so the geographical revision proved highly remunerative to Stanford.

Looking ahead, outer space represents the next frontier not only for mankind's conquering spirit, but also for business. Many heavenly bodies contain staggering amounts of mineral wealth, although it remains to be seen whether their exploitation will prove commercial. At present, space tourism probably has nearer-term prospects for turning a profit. In any case, it will probably remain politically wise to justify government expenditures on space exploration partly on the basis of technology that can be adapted to earthbound use.

ATHLETICS

In every period since the inception of professional baseball in the 1860s, sports enthusiasts have lamented commercial influence as though it were something new under the sun. Businesses had begun backing teams, with an eye toward gaining favorable publicity, when the game was still purely amateur. To improve their chances of being associated with winning teams, the business proprietors attracted top players by offering them jobs that left plenty of time for honing their skills. From there, it was just a small leap to setting professional sports on its long road of salary disputes and squabbles over the division of gate receipts and, later, broadcast revenues. As the scale of enterprises increased and the corporate structure replaced sole proprietorships and partnerships as the preferred form of business ownership, it became inevitable that stadiums would one day bear the names of mammoth corporations.

The evolution of most major sports would have been far different if the profit motive had not figured in the picture. There is a general tendency for defensive tactics to evolve more quickly than offensive tactics, resulting in a reduction of scoring. This in turn reduces spectator interest and, as a consequence, attendance and gate receipts. Perhaps if they were playing for the sheer pleasure of the game, players would prefer low-scoring battles of endurance, but under the direction of club owners, rules committees have ensured that plenty of points would continue to go up on the scoreboard.

When scoring slackened in various periods, professional basketball introduced the 24-second clock. prohibited the zone defense, and loosened the enforcement of traveling rules. Baseball banned the spitball, lowered the pitcher's mound, and instructed umpires to call a smaller strike zone. Devoted soccer fans work themselves up to a fever pitch even in response to scoreless ties, but they are the exception. Even in bowling, where there is no defense, the sport's promoters have contrived to raise scores by applying grease to the lanes in a manner calculated to help bowlers keep their balls in the desired groove.

As for ice hockey, referees surely could be empowered to control fights more effectively if team owners did not perceive a gate appeal in brawling. Boxing fans would likely prefer undisputed titles, rather than the present proliferation of champions within each weight division. As a business proposition, however, it makes eminent sense for competing boxing federations to coexist. The more champions, the more championship bouts that can be staged, with attendant benefits for ticket sales and broadcast revenues.

RELIGION

Most major religions, with roots in preindustrial societies, have adapted to the business's changing needs through various stages of economic development. For example, Jewish and Christian restrictions on payment of interest would have severely impeded the development of capital markets had theologians not refined the rules. Interest on business loans, in which the lender was exposed to a venture's risk and was therefore entitled to compensation, was distinguished from interest on loans for personal sustenance. Islam has continued to proscribe interest in any form, yet Muslim authorities have approved arrangements whereby money is hired in a form that technically qualifies as equity, but is paid for with cash flows that simulate bond coupons.

While passively yielding to business demands that conflicted with traditional observance, religious organizations have actively adopted business models in recruitment (proselytizing) and finance (fundraising). Many clergy and lay leaders also display considerable sophistication in marketing. They consciously address target markets in their efforts to build their congregations, designing worship and social activities accordingly. Denomination-wide advertising has incorporated Madison Avenue's soft-sell techniques, effectively identifying a need and offering a solution. Instead of conjuring up fears of eternal damnation, commercial messages typically aim their appeal at individuals who feel alienated in a society less bound than preceding generations by familial and communal ties. Like their counterparts in the consumer goods field, religious advertisers employ endorsements by celebrities from the entertainment and sports world.

Inevitably, the application of business techniques to the propagation of faith causes uneasiness. Religious imagery is rich with conflicts between God and Mammon, money-changers in the temple, and the improbability of a camel passing through the eye of a needle, an object lesson to rich men hoping to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Critics worry about cafeteria-style religion, in which the faithful are permitted to select only the parts of the program that make them feel good. Few are likely to choose renunciation of sin or even remorse for it. In addition to commercializing Christmas, the business influence is now accused of watering down the very essence of spirituality.

PERCEPTIONS OF BUSINESS

While concems about dilution of religion are not entirely unfounded, it is doubtful whether most believers would be offended by a suggestion that their churches, synagogues, temples, or mosques are being run in a businesslike fashion. The term carries a positive connotation, particularly where substantial sums of money are involved. People like the no-nonsense attitude associated with the business world, notwithstanding their warm response to television programs and motion pictures that demonize business people as ruthless profiteers with secret links to organized crime.

Public opinion regarding business contains numerous self-contradictions. Still, John and Jane Q. Public applaud the notion of seeing government run on a more businesslike basis. Periodic revelations of grotesque procurement practices by the Pentagon reinforce the not-entirely-warranted idea that waste would be eliminated if business people supplanted lawyers and career politicians in the halls of Congress. Critics of large corporations have their own horror stories to tell in the area of cost containment and illfounded projects, yet the profit motive is commonly seen as a powerful disciplinary tool.

To be sure, attitudes toward business are as changeable as the level of prosperity. Tycoons were widely regarded as heroes during the good times of the 1920s, but reviled during the Great Depression of the 1930s. During those grim years, bank robbers such as Bonnie and Clyde were apt to be held in higher esteem than bankers.

The current, comparatively favorable public image of business and business people derives partly from benign economic conditions in the United States. Inflation and unemployment have declined in tandem. This is not only a development that many economists once thought highly improbable, but also a change that defuses two major sources of hostility toward business. Economists may blame inflation on governments that put too much money into circulation, but the problem becomes most palpable when manufacturers and merchants raise their prices. Because business ness has been put less and less frequently in the position of delivering the bad news, it has not been chafed by reactions to loss of purchasing power. Low unemployment, meanwhile, has muted criticism of the corporate layoffs. Happily for business, too, the large volume of 1990s merger-and-acquisition has differed in nature from the activity observed during the 1980s. The perception at that time was that jobs were being destroyed by greedy "corporate raiders" bankrolled by dubious "junk bonds."

In a larger sense, the Soviet Union's downfall has bolstered confidence in the private sector as an engine of economic vitality. Developed countries that were never part of the centrally planned economy bloc have reinforced that message by successfully privatizing major industries that were long publicly owned. In the same spirit, Americans have rethought the role of their own, more limited public sector. Cautiously, to be sure, they are exploring the possibility of opening up primary and secondary education to increased competition from for-profit operators. As a consequence, entrepreneurs view education, up to the college level, as a vast new field of opportunity. Meanwhile, the public seems committed to making high-quality health care broadly available, notwithstanding the enormous cost, but appears leery of creating a vast new government apparatus to administer it. The state, instead of withering away under socialism as Karl Marx prophesied, is shrinking out of a perception that its regulatory role is less necessary than in former times. All of these phenomena bespeak confidence in the ability of business to play a constructive role in the economy.

Certainly, that confidence does not imply an endorsement of every action of every corporation. With little prompting, many individuals would complain at length about perceived inadequacies in corporations' regard for the environment and the hiring and promotion of women and minority group members. Others would focus on such issues as cigarettes, product safety, and dealings with assorted authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Shareholder rights advocates would add a litany of gripes about executive compensation and the transparency of financial disclosure.

There appears to be little political opportunity, however, in trying to persuade the public that these flaws are mere symptoms of an inherently rotten system called capitalism. From the U.S. Democratic Party to Britain's Labour Party, antibusiness rhetoric is out of fashion. With many big corporations humbled by smaller, more nimble competitors, they no longer make punching bags as good as they did when their grip on markets seemed far more secure. Smug, middle-aged corporate fat cats have been replaced in the public's imagination by smart, irreverent, twentysomething technology entrepreneurs. Business is no longer seen as drab and unimaginative, but as dynamic, fun, and worthy of celebrity-oriented cable television coverage.

THE BLESSING AND CURSE OF TECHNOLOGY

From a public image standpoint, the association of business with cutting-edge technology is a major benefit. Aside from the Unabomber and a few other back-to-the-earth eccentrics, people tend to like new gadgets, or at least the promise of rising living standards that they represent. To the extent that business people are perceived as facilitating the introduction of improved communication, better information, and miraculous new medical treatments, they are winners.

There are losers, as well as winners, however, when the question is examined from the standpoint of profits. Radical new technologies wipe out investments in old technologies in a process that economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction and the victims call bankruptcy. Even within industries that survive the change, there are losers. Whether through inattentiveness or lack of capital, some companies fail to invest early enough in the new technology and suffer severe competitive losses. For example, discount retailing did not disappear when computerized inventory control became available, but early-adopter Wal-Mart displaced latecomer Kmart as the industry's leader.

Returning for a moment to the theme of business's permeation of a society's entire fabric, the impact of sweeping technological changes cannot be overstated. Consider, for example, the introduction of the assembly line by Ford Motor Company in 1913-1914. The simple idea was to move the automobile to the worker, rather than vice versa, in the course of its assembly. This innovation permitted Ford to break down the assembly process into smaller tasks that could be performed more efficiently. Labor time per vehicle consequently fell by nearly 90 percent. Ford Motor Company was a big winner in this technological revolution, becoming the leading producer of automobiles and making its founder the only self-made billionaire of his time. Social ramifications of the new technology were even greater. The assembly line transformed the automobile from a luxury item to a mass market consumer good. Thereupon followed interstate highways, suburban expansion, drive-in movie theaters, and according to sociologists, a revolution in sexual mores with the invention of the back seat.

At present, the business world appears to be on the verge of a massive new wave of creative destruction, precipitated by the Internet. This technology dramatically increases consumers' ability to obtain information, including price information. Any fat in profit margins that depends on superior access to information is threatened. The Internet also enables companies' nies' business and consumer customers to complete transactions quickly and efficiently, without leaving their offices or homes or speaking to a salesperson. There is no telling how much brick-and-mortar will be rendered redundant through the elimination of the need for people to go to a place to do business.

The other side of the coming devastation is the opportunity to supply technology to new-style companies. To be sure, there is substantial risk in gearing up to supply a particular technology, which might be superseded at any time by something even more advanced. Indeed, upfront investment often is required before it even becomes clear that a proposed new technology will prove practicable. With risk, however, comes the possibility of spectacular profits. Bill Gates, successor to John D. Rockefeller, Sr. and Henry Ford as the world's wealthiest self-made man, made his fortune in computer software that carried no guarantee of success at the outset. In many instances, in fact, it did not initially work very well after being introduced.

For business users of the new technology, the upside is less dazzling than the billions earned by Bill Gates. An early adopter may gain a temporary advantage in cost, information, or logistics. That advantage may translate into a short-lived boost in profit margins, but the competitors have just two choices: Follow the leader or die. As they replicate the earlyadopter's advantage, the force of competition will pass the benefits along to customers. Companies must run just to stay in place, as spectacular advances in technology make business dramatically more efficient, but business operators capture only a modest portion of the rewards. In transmitting the benefits of innovation to society-at-large, business demonstrates once again its pervasive, but underappreciated, role in the civilization.

INNOVATION CONTINUES TO EXPAND THE TOPIC

Thanks to the march of technology and methodological innovations, there will never be a conclusive edition of the Encyclopedia of Business. The editors' challenge will always be to contain the sprawling subject within the covers of a small number of volumes. Happily, this leaves no room for fluff and ensures a good return on every hour spent in studying the articles.

In trying to get a handle on the topic, readers may do best to think of business not in terms of functions such as marketing and finance, but rather as a challenge to every human faculty. Creative types will find a formidable task in trying to make their marketing message heard above the din. For individuals who seek to impose order, accounting systems provide endless exercises of ingenuity. Homo sapiens's love of games finds fulfillment in the daunting complexity of corporate strategy.

Yet another worthy challenge is integrating the various disciplines to achieve the goals of a business organization. The Encyclopedia of Business advances this objective by presenting an exceptionally wide range of subjects in one place. Articles range from the technicalities of manufacturing to the fine points of financial theory, without neglecting legal, organizational, or behavioral issues. Taxes, inevitably, receive their due. In addition, the contributors provide a global perspective on these issues. For readers who aim to succeed by putting it all together, poring over these pages will be time well spent.