1. What types of companies do you know?

2. Speak about flexibility and its types.

3. What is meant by "teleworking"?

4. What do you know about SOL company? Why is it unusual?

1. What types of companies do you know?

Historically there were only sole proprietorships. Then came partnerships and then corporations.

Corporations are a several centuries old phenomena. Partnerships were arrangements between two or more individuals in which they pooled resources, and split expenses and profits. At first corporations were chartered by monarchies. Historically corporations offered limited liability and partnerships did not. In other words, if the venture failed, the organizers and promoters of a corporation retained their personal assets, while the owners and organizers of a partnership could lose their personal assets to the creditors of the business venture.

We can now define sole proprietorship as a business enterprise exclusively owned, managed and

controlled by a single person with all authority, responsibility and risk.

Suppose you want to open a restaurant in your locality. You will need to organize a lot of things. You may find that it is not possible to arrange the money required to start and run the business alone. You may then talk to your friends and all of you agree to run the restaurant by contributing a certain amount of money and the other things required. So all of you join to become the owners and share the profits and losses. This is another form of business organization – partnership. A company form of business organization is known as a Joint Stock Company. It is a voluntary association of persons who generally contribute capital to carry on a particular type of business, which is established by law and can be dissolved only by law. Persons who contribute capital become members of the company. This form of business has a legal existence separate from its members, which means even if its members die, the company remains in existence. This form of business organizations generally requires huge capital investment, which is contributed by its members. The total capital of a joint stock

company is called share capital and it is divided into a number of units called shares. Thus, every

member has some shares in the business depending upon the amount of capital contributed by him. Private Limited Company. These companies can be formed by at least two individuals having minimum fixed paid–up capital (the amount of money is determined by legislation of the country). The total membership of these companies cannot exceed a certain number of people (this number can be different in different countries). The shares allotted to its members are also not freely transferable between them.

These companies are not allowed to raise money from the public through open invitation and are required to use “Private Limited” after their names.

Public Limited Company. A minimum of seven members are required to form a public limited company. It must have minimum paid–up capital. There is no restriction on maximum number of members.The shares allotted to the members are freely transferable. These companies can raise funds from general public through open invitations by selling its shares or accepting fixed deposits. These companies are required to write either ‘public limited’ or ‘limited’ after their names. These are the main, but not the only types of business organization.