Business Economics

At the library today, I stumbled upon a book entitled "Business Economics". It struck upon me a mix feelings of confusion and gladness. I have to admit that the years I have spent at the University of Saskatchewan (UoS) doing a B.A in Business Economics, I never really knew the actual meaning or the essence of Business Economics.

Business Economics as the course is taught at UoS is a combination of Economics classes/courses with the College of Arts and Science, and Commerce classes with the College of Commerce. Essentially, students would study pure economics from micro/macroEconomics, mathematical economics and statistical analysis for economics, etc., to Organization Behaviors, Production Management, Managerial Accounting, Marketing, etc. However, such dedicated subject as "Business Economics" has never been in the syllabus.

The book itself was already enticing me to pick it up and so i did; checked it out of the library. The questions of "What IS Business Economics? How come I have never come across this book or knew the existence of Business Economics?" kept pounding in my mind just before I flipped its cover.

Flipped to the "Introduction" page and read through thoroughly only to find interesting facts. Vague memories of general economics theories and familiar names mentioned began to make more sense as I continued reading until I hit a subtitle: What is Business Economics and its scope. This is what Maria Moschandreas, the author, has to say about what I did not know:

"This book attempts to synthesize tradional and modern contributions to the theory of the firm in a way that is comprehensible to undergraduate students. The outcome of this synthesis is a part of economic knowledge which can address questions of immediate interest to business enterprises.
Business economics can therefore be defined as that part of economic theory which focuses on business enterprises and inquires into the factors contributing to the diversity of organizational structures and to the relationships of firms with labor, capital, and product markets.

Business economics is, therefore, concerned with problems related with business organization, management and strategy. Its enquiry includes issues such as the following:

An exploration of the reasons why firms emerge;

What contributes to their vertical, horizontal and spacial expansion;

The role and function of entrepreneurship; the significance of organizational structure;

The relationship of the firm with its employess, the providers of capital and its consumers, and;

The interaction between firms and the industrial environment."

Hello? Did you manage to read up to the last line? Wake up!! I understood what it says there although we do not have Moschandreas' textbook. We have covered most of the items by taking various classes in both Colleges mentioned above. Frankly speaking, I dare to believe that not even my classmates knew about that.

To make my life and YOUR life easier, we shall try to rephrase the couple of paragraphs above into easy-to-understand English:
"Business Economics is concerned with the nature, scope and functioning of business enterprises. The apporach it adopts comprises a synthesis of tradional and modern economic concepts and analysis tools to build a coherent analytical framework capable of dealing with questions of direct relevance to business. It also uses real worl examples and is enriched with material drawn from a variety of international sources, covering cases ranging from the small firm to the international corporation." As quoted from the sypnosis, at the back of the book.

There! how's that?

It is, however, an irony to me, that somebody knew so much better about the bachelor's degree I got over 4 years of university. At the same time, I feel like I know more about [theoritical] economics and commercial issues. I suppose I can do a 'one plus one = two' thingy.

Flipping through the pages recalls fond memories of me at the Main Library of UoS struggling through assignments, dissertations, and projects. The textbook is furnished with illustrations, graphs, tabulated data, flow charts...etc., but my law textbook is as boring as dead people can get. haha! I had to draw little cartoons on the margins to illustrate each cases.

That's all my bored mind has to say. later.