2020-06-08
145English as a Global Language
English is the native language for more than 300 million people on our earth. But nowadays it is widely used not only in those countries where it is a first language. A lot of countries (such as China, Russia, Thailand and many others) have recognized the importance of this language recently as an international means of communication. English is taught in all schools and colleges there. In Russia itself English is gathering pace as a popular second language.
There are also some countries (such as India, Singapore, Pakistan, the Philippines and some African countries) where English is an official second language and it is often used in mass media, courts, parliaments and universities.
Today English is used almost everywhere. It is the language of banking and industry, computers and trade, technology and science. English as an international language helps people of different nationalities from around the world discuss politics or arrange business meetings. For example, German and Italian businessmen can choose English as their mutual language of communication.
More and more people from non-English speaking countries start learning the language and using it in their daily life, business and travelling. Tourism development has contributed much to English becoming the universal means of communication. However some linguists hold the opinion that the globalization of English as an international language can be quite harmful for the language itself because foreign speakers greatly influence its grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary.
Career Choice
Every person at the age of 14 to 17 has to make an extremely stressful decision, to choose his or her own career. You might be wondering what the difference is between a career and a job. Basically a job is something you do, but don't expect to continue doing forever. A career is what you hope to do for a long time or even for your entire working life. Choosing a career is a difficult task: the decision once taken will influence your future life. The earlier you decide on what profession is interesting and rewarding for you, the more you can achieve during your lifetime.
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Choosing a career is a challenging task indeed. It is all about finding the perfect match between your personality, interests, and skills. On the one hand, modern society, with its hundreds of professions and jobs, presents a vast range of future job opportunities. On the other hand, modern society with its crises, unemployment and inflation, makes a poor choice of profession a really bad mistake.
You can choose a profession you really like, and face problems when looking for a job. Or you can find a job you like, but it will be underpaid. Besides, a young person's parents usually have their own ideas of what career path to choose. Some parents are more democratic and let the child determine his future by himself. Some are oppressive and overprotective and try to force the child to make this or that career choice. In this case, they often try to compensate for their own dreams which have failed and the chances they have missed. Sometimes they see their child is gifted in some field and try to persuade him to choose this profession irrespective of the fact if he likes it or not.
In spite of all the problems mentioned above, the choice has to be made. It's best for the young man to start this process as early as possible. You should determine if you would like to continue in higher education, or to learn a trade and look for a job. It's up to the person to decide, but you should remember that to get more chances, you should strive for higher education which enables you to be qualified for skilled labour. You also have to consider the demand for a particular career in the labour market. Choosing a career where there are limited job opportunities can greatly increase the challenges you will face.
Leadership skills
Leadership skills can help you in all aspects of your career, from applying for jobs to seeking career advancement.
Knowing the definitions of leadership skills can be especially helpful when you’re writing your resume. If you’re applying for jobs that require you to take initiative and be a leader you should list leadership skills on your resume.
Leadership skills are skills you use when organizing other people to reach a shared goal. Whether you’re in a management position or leading a project, leadership skills require you to motivate others to complete a series of tasks, often according to a schedule. Leadership is not just one skill but rather a combination of several different skills working together.
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Some examples of skills that make a strong leader include:
· Patience
· Empathy
· Active listening
· Reliability
· Dependability
· Creativity
· Positivity
· Effective feedback
· Timely communication
· Team building
· Flexibility
· Risk-taking
· Ability to teach and mentor
The leadership skills are very important. Effective leaders are essential to any organization. They can help build strong teams within a business and ensure projects, initiatives or other work functions are performed successfully.
Most people have seen the results of both effective and ineffective leaders on the job. Good leaders increase employee engagement, support a positive environment and help remove obstacles for their team. Good leadership is also contagious, inspiring colleagues to apply positive leadership traits in their own work.
Business Ethics
Ethics is the system of moral principles, rules of conduct, and morality of choices that individuals make. Business ethics is the application of moral standards to business situations. Business ethics has become a matter of public concern. All business people face ethical issues daily, and they stem from a variety of sources. Although some types of issues arise infrequently, others occur regularly. Let’s take a closer look at several ethical issues.
1. Fairness and Honesty are two important ethical concerns. Besides obeying all laws and regulations, business people should refrain from deceiving, misrepresenting, or intimidating others.
2. Organizational Relationships. Relationships with customers and coworkers often create ethical problems – since confidential information should be secret and all obligations should be honored. Unethical behavior in these areas includes not meeting one’s obligations in a mutual agreement, and pressing others to behave unethically.
3. Conflict of Interest results when a business person takes advantage of a situation for his or her own personal interest rather than for the employer’s or organization’s interest. A wise rule to remember is that anything given to a person that might unfairly influence that person’s business decision is a bribe, and all bribes are unethical.
4. Communications. Business communications, especially advertising, can present ethical questions. False and misleading advertising is illegal and unethical, and it can infuriate customers.
5. Relationships. Business ethics involves relationships between a firm and its investors, customers, employees, creditors, and competitors. Each group has specific concerns, and each exerts some type of pressure on management.
WHAT IS ACCOUNTING?
Accounting is the process of identifying, recording, and analyzing financial information of a company or business. It has been called “the language of business”. The better you understand the language, the better you can manage the financial aspects of living. Personal financial planning, investments, loans, car payments, income taxes, and many other aspects of daily life are based on accounting.
Accounting is the system that measures business activities, processes that information into reports, and communicates these findings to decision makers.
Financial statements are documents that report on an individual’s or an organization’s business in monetary amounts.
Is our business making a profit? Should we start up a new line of women's clothing? Are sales strong enough to warrant opening a new branch outlet? The most intelligent answers to business questions like these use accounting information. Decision makers use the information to develop sound business plans. As new programs affect the business’s activities, accounting takes the company’s financial pulse beat. The cycle continues as the accounting system measures the results of activities and reports the results to decision makers.
WHAT IS ECONOMICS
The entire discipline of economics - and all economic activity - arises from a scarcity of goods and services in comparison to human wants and needs. If there is not enough of something for everyone who wants or needs it, society faces a serious problem: it has to make decision about some basic economic questions.
Throughout history there have always been people who obtained what they wanted or needed by force. The barbarians who sacked Rome practiced this form of “economic activity,” and in modern times it is practiced by armed robbers. But a society requires an orderly system of producing and distributing the necessities and luxuries of life. Such a system is essential to a stable society. Economics is the study of systems of production and distribution - which are called economies - and of their fundamentals, dynamics, and results.
Accounting Reports
Financial statements are the main way to report financial information to people within your organization, such as management and employees and to people outside your organizations such as banks, investors, suppliers and others.
The main three financial statements for small businesses are the balance sheet, the Profit and Loss Statement (income statement), and the statement of cash flows.
A balance sheet (or the Statement of Financial Position) is used by a business to evaluate its financial health and make financial business decisions. It shows what your business owns and what it owes. The balance sheet will show a summary of a company’s assets, liabilities and owner’s equity at a specific point in time. It is usually prepared at the end of the month, quarter, or year.
The Profit and Loss (P&L) statement is a financial statement that summarizes the revenues, costs, and expenses incurred during a specified period. Every public company issues the P&L statement quarterly and annually, along with the balance sheet and the cash flow statement. It quickly shows how much profit or loss was generated by a business.
The Statement of Cash Flows (or the cash flow statement) is one of the three key financial statements that report the cash generated and spent during a specific period of time (e.g., a month, quarter, or year). The statement of cash flows acts as a bridge between the income statement and balance sheet by showing how money moved in and out of the business.. The main groups of people interested in statement of cash flows include accounting personnel, potential creditors or lenders, who want to have a clear picture of a company’s repaying ability, potential investors, potential contractors or employees, and business’ shareholders.
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Taxes
Taxes are a compulsory financial contribution by a person or body of persons towards the expenditure of a public authority. In modern economies taxes are the most important source of government revenues.
Taxes are considered to have three functions:
1) fiscal or budgetary, to cover government expenditures;
2) economic, to give effect to economic policy, to promote stable economic growth;
3) social, to increase the economic welfare of the community.
In the UK there is no single code of tax law, the body of tax legislation being increased by each year’s Finance Act. The United Kingdom operates a ‘schedular’ system, whereby taxable income from different sources is calculated and taxed under the rules of a particular ‘schedule’.
Under Russian law, all Russian legal entities are subject to the profit tax law. Foreign entities that have a taxable permanent establishment in Russia are also taxed under this law.
Russian taxes provide revenue for three tiers of the budget: federal, regional and local. The major taxes paid to the budget are: profit tax, value-added tax (VAT), securities tax, withholding tax.
A number of countries have problems because of significant taxpayer non-compliance. Along with cases of illegal evasion of tax obligations there are entirely legal ways of avoidance by which a person may so arrange his affairs as to minimize, or even eliminate, tax liability on his property and income.
Russian tax system has undergone significant changes over the last few years: the Tax Code has been worked out and a number or related laws have been adopted. Yet the system is criticized and businessmen consider it complicated and unfair. The government is working to improve tax administration to close the loopholes for tax evasion.
Business Trip
Employees of different countries usually go on business trips. Any firm chooses only best export for it. Companies can arrange such trips both in and outside the country.
There are many reasons of going on business there are to make a contract, to discuss different terms of delivery, payment or shipment, to have tests, to do consultancy, to improve once professional skills, to work etc. Represent-natives of the companies make preliminary arrangements in order to meet.
A business trip can be a long term or a short term one. Often an employee must give a financial report to the chief. As a rule, businessman has a chance to go sightseeing or to visit theatres, or just have some rest after the working day.
They also try to buy gifts or presents to relatives, friends and colleagues business trips contribute to extension of business relationship of a company and help to succeed in the world market.
Business today is international, so business people often have to travel. On a business trip people may meet colleagues and business partners for a first time.
It is usual for colleagues from different countries to experience cultural difficulties. In other words, they may be surprised by foreign social conventions that is the different ways that other nationalities or different cultures do things.
Management styles are also differed from country to country. In some cases it is useful to get a piece of advice from a special agency, consulting on the questions of international business.
Business trips are very important nowadays because face to face contracts are more valuable and useful for the matter.
Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli
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Luca Pacioli was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan monk, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and an early contributor to the field now known as accounting. He is referred to as "The Father of Accounting and Bookkeeping" in Europe.
He was born between 1446 and 1448 in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro (Сансеполькро). The education he had received was focused on the knowledge required of merchants.
He moved to Venice around 1464, where he continued his own education while working as a tutor to the three sons of a merchant. During that period, he wrote his first book on arithmetic for the boys he was tutoring. In 1470s he became a Franciscan monk and started teaching in Perugia (Перуджа) as a private teacher. During this time, he wrote a comprehensive textbook for his students. Soon his first book on mathematics was published in Venice.
In 1497, he accepted an invitation to work in Milan. There he met Leonrdo da Vinci. They started working together. In 1499, Pacioli and da Vinci were forced to flee Milan where their paths appear to have finally separated.
Pacioli died at about the age of 70 in 1517, most likely in Sansepolcro, where it is thought that he had spent much of his final years.
Pacioli published several works on mathematics. He dramatically affected the practice of accounting by describing the double-entry accounting method used in parts of Italy. His work on accounting was used internationally as an accounting textbook up to the mid-16th century. The essentials of double-entry accounting have for the most part remain unchanged for over 500 years.
