This document traces the evolution of business systems from feudalism to capitalism. It discusses how under feudalism, aristocrats controlled property rights over resources including people. Mercantilism saw the rise of trade between countries and merchants noticing price differences in markets. Capitalism established private property rights as the basis for production, trade and distribution. The industrial revolution was driven by innovations like the steam engine and coal mining, dramatically increasing wealth. Overall it describes how business organizations evolved to more productively control and use resources for capital and wealth creation.

1. Evolution of Business
Presented by Denise Cook
27 January 2013 BUS/210 Instructor: James Rosa

2. Overview
• Feudalism
• Mercantilism
• Capitalism
• Commerce
• Property Rights
• The Industrial Revolution

3. Feudalism
• Aristocrats control the property rights to all valuable
resources, including people.
• Laborers began to receive more rights and rewards.
• The system of tenant farming evolved.
• The Hundred Years War,was fought in England.

4. Mercantilism
• Products are traded across markets and countries
• Merchants are traders who notice a difference
between the value and price of a product in
onemarket and its value and price in another.
• From the time of the Phoenician traders onwards,
there was a great deal of mercantilism between
countries in the Middle East and Europe.

5. Capitalism
• Private property rights the basis for the production,
trade, and distribution of goods and services.
• Capitalist has many negative overtones because of
industrialists like Rockefeller and Carnegie.
• Proletariat, the vast, faceless mass of laborers who
worked for subsistence wages.
• Trade unions and class systems developed.

6. Commerce
• The hierarchy of authority evolved early to reduce
the transaction costs surrounding business activity.
• The joint-stock corporation evolved to make it easier
for enterprising peopleto borrow capital.
• Barter system led to a problem economists call the
double coincidence of wants arises.

7. Property Rights
• The claims by people to own, use, and sell the rights
to valuable resources.
• In earliest times, the claim to property rights was a
matter of brute force.
• Aristocrats had the incentive to enterprise ways to
use the estates’ land and labor more profitably and
increase their personal wealth and power.

8. The Industrial Revolution
• The emergence of the steam engine was a crucial
event.
• The development of coal mining.
• Affected both farming and manufacturing and led to
a dramatic increase in the wealth and prosperity.
• Constant wars isolated peoplemaking it difficult for
them to learn about new innovations.

9. Conclusion
• Business systems evolved from earliest times to
feudalism, mercantilism, and then to capitalism.
• People organized themselves into business systems
to take control of productive resources and use them
to create capital and wealth.
• The way business as commerce, occupation, and
organization evolved to allow land, labor, capital,
and enterprise to be used more productively and
profitably.

10. References
• Jones, G. R. (2007). Introduction to business: How
companies create value for people. New York,
NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin