|
Profit Motive
In economics, the profit motive is the motivation of firms that operate so as to maximize their profits. Mainstream microeconomic theory posits that the ultimate goal of a business is "to make money" - not in the sense of increasing the firm's stock of means of payment (which is usually kept to a necessary minimum because means of payment incur costs, i.e. interest or foregone yields), but in the sense of "increasing net worth". Stated differently, the reason for a business's existence is to turn a profit. The profit motive is a key tenet of rational choice theory, or the theory that economic agents tend to pursue what is in their own best interests. In accordance with this doctrine, businesses seek to benefit themselves and/or their shareholders by maximizing profits. As it extends beyond economics into ideology, the profit motive has been a major matter of contention. Economics Theoretically, when an economy is fully competitive (i.e. has no market imperfections like extern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Profit (economics)
In economics, profit is the difference between the revenue that an economic entity has received from its outputs and the total cost of its inputs. It is equal to total revenue minus total cost, including both explicit and implicit costs. It is different from accounting profit, which only relates to the explicit costs that appear on a firm's financial statements. An accountant measures the firm's accounting profit as the firm's total revenue minus only the firm's explicit costs. An economist includes all costs, both explicit and implicit costs, when analyzing a firm. Therefore, economic profit is smaller than accounting profit. ''Normal profit'' is often viewed in conjunction with economic profit. Normal profits in business refer to a situation where a company generates revenue that is equal to the total costs incurred in its operation, thus allowing it to remain operational in a competitive industry. It is the minimum profit level that a company can achieve to justify its con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Value Chain
A value chain is a progression of activities that a firm operating in a specific industry performs in order to deliver a valuable product (i.e., good and/or service) to the end customer. The concept comes through business management and was first described by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, ''Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance''. The concept of value chains as decision support tools, was added onto the competitive strategies paradigm developed by Porter as early as 1979. In Porter's value chains, Inbound Logistics, Operations, Outbound Logistics, Marketing and Sales, and Service are categorized as primary activities. Secondary activities include Procurement, Human Resource management, Technological Development and Infrastructure . According to the OECD Secretary-General the emergence of global value chains (GVCs) in the late 1990s provided a catalyst for accelerated change in the landscape of international investment and trade, wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incentive
In general, incentives are anything that persuade a person to alter their behaviour. It is emphasised that incentives matter by the basic law of economists and the laws of behaviour, which state that higher incentives amount to greater levels of effort and therefore, higher levels of performance. Divisions Incentives can be broken down into two categories; intrinsic incentives and extrinsic incentives. The motivation of people's behaviour comes from within. In activities, they are often motivated by the task itself or the internal reward rather than the external reward. There are many internal rewards, for example, participating in activities can satisfy people's sense of achievement and bring them positive emotions. An intrinsic incentive is when a person is motivated to act in a certain way for their own personal satisfaction. This means that when a person is intrinsically incentivised, they perform a certain task to please themselves and are not seeking any external reward, nor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Objectivism
Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by Russian Americans, Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. She described it as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute"."About the Author" in Rand first expressed Objectivism in her fiction, most notably ''The Fountainhead'' (1943) and ''Atlas Shrugged'' (1957), and later in non-fiction essays and books. Leonard Peikoff, a professional philosopher and Rand's designated intellectual heir, later gave it a more formal structure. Peikoff characterizes Objectivism as a "closed system" insofar as its "fundamental principles" were set out by Rand and are not subject to change. However, he stated that "new implications, applications and integrations can always be discovered". Objectivism's main tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Virtue Of Selfishness
''The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism'' is a 1964 collection of essays by the philosopher Ayn Rand and the writer Nathaniel Branden. Most of the essays originally appeared in ''The Objectivist Newsletter''. The book covers ethical issues from the perspective of Rand's Objectivist philosophy. Some of its themes include the identification and validation of egoism as a rational code of ethics, the destructiveness of altruism, and the nature of a proper government. Summary The book contains 19 essays, 14 of them written by Rand and five by Branden, plus an introduction written by Rand. All but one of the essays had previously been published in ''The Objectivist Newsletter'', a magazine that Rand and Branden had launched in 1962. The exception was the book's first essay, "The Objectivist Ethics", which was a paper Rand delivered at the University of Wisconsin during a symposium on "Ethics in Our Time". "The Objectivist Ethics" explains the foundations of Rand's ethical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ayn Rand
Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;, . Most sources transliterate her given name as either ''Alisa'' or ''Alissa''. , 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (), was a Russian-born American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful and two Broadway plays, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, ''The Fountainhead''. In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel ''Atlas Shrugged''. Afterward, until her death in 1982, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays. Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge; she rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism and rejected altruism. In politics, she condemned the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Phil Donahue Show
''The Phil Donahue Show'', also known as ''Donahue'', is an American television talk show hosted by Phil Donahue that ran for 26 years on national television. Its run was preceded by three years of local broadcast on WLWD in Dayton, Ohio, and it was broadcast nationwide between 1970 and 1996. History Dayton start In 1967, Phil Donahue left his positions as news reporter and interviewer at WHIO radio and television in Dayton to go into the stations' sales department. He found he did not like it and took an on-air news position at another Dayton TV station, WLWD (now WDTN). The station’s weekday variety, music and chat program, ''The Johnny Gilbert Show'', ended suddenly, when Gilbert left on short notice for a hosting job in New York City. WLWD named Donahue to replace Gilbert, keeping the live format and studio audience. But Donahue decided to take the show in a new direction. He focused on one guest or topic for the entire hour and invited the audience to ask questions. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-interest
Self-interest generally refers to a focus on the needs or desires (''interests'') of one's self. Most times, actions that display self-interest are often performed without conscious knowing. A number of philosophical, psychological, and economic theories examine the role of self-interest in motivating human action. Individuals may have a self-serving bias towards their self-interest. In philosophy Philosophical concepts concerned with self-interest include: * Enlightened self-interest, a philosophy which states that acting to further the interests of others also serves one's own self-interest. * Ethical egoism, the ethical position that moral agents ''ought'' to do what is in their own self-interest. * Hedonism, the school of ethics which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. ** Cyrenaics, the Aristippean pre-Socratic original. ** Epicureanism, a philosophical system related to hedonism. * Individualism, a philosophy stressing the worth of individual selves. * Ratio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. With George Stigler and others, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the mid-1970s, when it turned to new classical macroeconomics heavily based on the concept of rational expectations. Several students, young professors and academics who were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists, including Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, Thomas Sowell and Robert Lucas Jr. Friedman's challenges to what he called "naive Keynesian theory" began with his interpretation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell (; born June 30, 1930) is an American author, economist, political commentator and academic who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he became a well-known voice in the American conservative movement and is considered one of the most influential black conservatives. He was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in 2002. Sowell was born in segregated Gastonia, North Carolina, to a poor family, and grew up in Harlem, New York City. Due to poverty and difficulties at home, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked various odd jobs, eventually serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. Afterward he took night classes at Howard University and then attended Harvard University, where he graduated '' magna cum laude'' in 1958. He earned a master's degree in economics from Columbia University the next year and a doc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Market
In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any other external authority. Proponents of the free market as a normative ideal contrast it with a regulated market, in which a government intervenes in supply and demand by means of various methods such as taxes or regulations. In an idealized free market economy, prices for goods and services are set solely by the bids and offers of the participants. Scholars contrast the concept of a free market with the concept of a coordinated market in fields of study such as political economy, new institutional economics, economic sociology and political science. All of these fields emphasize the importance in currently existing market systems of rule-making institutions external to the simple forces of supply and demand which create space for those ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Health Insurance
Health insurance or medical insurance (also known as medical aid in South Africa) is a type of insurance that covers the whole or a part of the risk of a person incurring medical expenses. As with other types of insurance, risk is shared among many individuals. By estimating the overall risk of health risk and health system expenses over the risk pool, an insurer can develop a routine finance structure, such as a monthly premium or payroll tax, to provide the money to pay for the health care benefits specified in the insurance agreement. The benefit is administered by a central organization, such as a government agency, private business, or not-for-profit entity. According to the Health Insurance Association of America, health insurance is defined as "coverage that provides for the payments of benefits as a result of sickness or injury. It includes insurance for losses from accident, medical expense, disability, or accidental death and dismemberment". Background A health i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.svg "Click for more on -> Profit (economics)")
.jpg "Click for more on -> Objectivism")
