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978-0-521-12250-4 Cambridge Business English Dictionary Cover C M Y K

MASCULL 978 0 521 12828 5 BUSINESS VOCABULARY IN USE INTERMEDIATE Without CD-ROM C M Y K

BUSINESS
VOCABULARY

Self-study and
classroom use
Third Edition

•

•

•

•

•

with answers

IN USE
Intermediate
Bill Mascull

BUSINESS
VOCABULARY
Self-study and
classroom use
Third Edition

IN USE
Intermediate
Bill Mascull

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
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Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781316629987
© Cambridge University Press 2017
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2002
Second Edition 2010
Third Edition 2017
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in Malaysia by Vivar Printing
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-316-62998-7 Book with Answers
ISBN 978-1-316-62997-0 Book with Answers and Ebook
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables, and other
factual information given in this work is correct at the time of first printing but
Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accur; acy of such information
thereafter.

Contents
INTRODUCTION

8

JOBS, PEOPLE AND
ORGANIZATIONS

1 Work and jobs

A Managers and executives: UK
B Managers and executives: US

10

A What do you do?
B Word combinations with ‘work’
C Types of job and types of work

2 Ways of working

12

A Working hours
B Nice work if you can get it
C Nature of work

A Recruitment
B Applying for a job
C Selection procedures

16

A
B
C
D

18

A
B
C
D

20

A
B
C
D

32

Self-employed people and partnerships
Limited liability
Mutuals
Non-profit organizations

13 Manufacturing and services 34
A Manufacturing and services
B Countries and their industries

A Market research
B Development and launch

15 Innovation and invention
22

Career paths
Company structure
In-house staff or freelancers?
Leaving a company

8 Problems at work

A Business and businesses
B Commerce
C Enterprise

14 The development process 36

Employees and management
Management and administration
Labour
Personnel and HRM

7 Companies and careers

30

PRODUCTION

A Wages, salary and benefits
B Compensation 1
C Compensation 2

6 People and workplaces

A Businesspeople and entrepreneurs
B Leaders and leadership
C Magnates, moguls and tycoons

12 Organizations 2

A Education and training
B Skilled and unskilled
C The right person

5 Pay and benefits

10 Businesspeople and business
28
leaders

11 Organizations 1

3 Recruitment and selection 14

4 Skills and qualifications

9 Managers, executives and
26
directors

38

A Innovation and invention
B Research and technology
C Patents and intellectual property

16 Products and services

40

A Products
B Mass production
C Capacity and output

24

A Discrimination
B Bullying and harassment
C Health and safety

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

3

17 Materials and suppliers

42

A Inputs
B Suppliers and outsourcing
C Just-in-time

18 Business philosophies
A
B
C
D

44

48

50

52

A Word combinations with ‘product’
B Goods
C Brands and branding

A
B
C
D

54

Pricing
Word combinations with ‘price’
Upmarket and downmarket
Mass markets and niches

24 Place

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

A Sales
B Costs
C Margins and mark-ups

28 Profitability and
unprofitability

64

A Profitable and unprofitable products
B Budgets and expenditure
C Economies of scale and the learning
curve

29 Getting paid

30 Assets, liabilities and the
balance sheet
A
B
C
D

66

68

Assets
Depreciation
Liabilities
Balance sheet

31 The bottom line

70

A Accounts
B Results
C Financial reporting

56

A Distribution: wholesalers, retailers and
customers
B Shops
C Direct marketing

4

62

A Shipping and billing
B Trade credit
C Accounts

A Marketing
B The four Ps
C The market orientation

23 Price

B2C, B2B and B2G
Web 2.0
E-commerce companies
Word combinations with ‘online’

27 Sales and costs
46

A Companies and markets
B More word combinations with ‘market’
C Competitors and competition

22 Products and brands

60

MONEY

A Customers and clients
B Buyers, sellers and vendors
C The market

21 Marketing and market
orientation

26 E-commerce
A
B
C
D

MARKETING

20 Markets and competitors

58

A Advertising
B The sales force
C Promotional activities

Mass customization
Wikinomics
The long tail
Benchmarking

19 Buyers, sellers and the
market

25 Promotion

32 Share capital and debt
A
B
C
D
E

Capital
Share capital
Loan capital
Security
Leverage

72

33 Success and failure
A
B
C
D

74

Cash mountains
Debt and debt problems
Turnarounds and bailouts
Bankruptcy

34 Mergers, takeovers and
sell-offs

40 Wrongdoing and corruption 88
A Wrongdoing
B Bribery and corruption
C Fraud and embezzlement

76

A Stakes and joint ventures
B Mergers and takeovers
C Conglomerates

78

A Traditional banking
B Internet banking
C Personal investing

36 Financial centres
A
B
C
D

80

A
B
C
D

82

A
B
C
D

84

Finance and economics
Inflation and unemployment
Trade
Growth and GDP

39 Indicators 2
Going up
Going down
Peaks and troughs
Boom and bust

A Professional behaviour
B Social issues
C Environmental issues

42 Time and time
management

92

43 Stress and stress
management

94

A When work is stimulating
B When stimulation turns to stress
C Downshifting

A Market indexes
B Market activity: good times …
C … and bad

38 Indicators 1

90

A Timeframes and schedules
B Projects and project management
C Time tips

Financial Centres
Stock markets
Other financial markets
Derivatives

37 Trading

41 Business ethics

PERSONAL SKILLS

FINANCE AND THE ECONOMY

35 Personal finance

DOING THE RIGHT THING

44 Leadership and management
styles
96
A Leadership
B Modern management styles
C Empowerment

CULTURE

45 Business across cultures 1 98
86

A Cultures and culture
B Power and distance

46 Business across cultures 2 100
A Individualism
B Time
C Cross-cultural communication

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

5

TELEPHONING AND WRITING

47 Telephoning 1: phones
and numbers
A
B
C
D

54 Interns, trainees and
apprentices
102

Telephones and beyond
‘Phone’, ‘call’ and ‘ring’
Numbers
Doing things over the phone

48 Telephoning 2: trying to
get through

A
B
C
D

104

106

Getting through
Giving and taking messages
Spelling names
Taking messages: checking information

Phoning again
Making arrangements
Closing the conversation
Changing arrangements

A Business cards 1
B Business cards 2
C Staying in touch

52 Business communication 2:
112
email
A Email
B Email expressions
C Beginnings and endings

A CV tips
B Parts of a CV
C Cover letters and emails

6

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

118

A Word combinations with ‘meeting’
B Types of meeting
C How was the meeting?

120

A The role of the chair: before the
meeting
B The role of the chair: running the
meeting
C Follow-up

57 Meetings 3: points of view 122
A Opening the meeting
B Asking for and expressing opinions

58 Meetings 4: agreement and
disagreement
124

51 Business communication 1:
staying in touch
110

53 CVs, cover letters
and emails

55 Meetings 1: types of
meeting

56 Meetings 2: the chair

50 Telephoning 4: arrangements
and ending calls
108
A
B
C
D

A Interns
B Experience or exploitation?
C Trainees and apprentices

BUSINESS SKILLS

A Asking to speak to someone
B Voicemail 1
C Voicemail 2

49 Telephoning 3: getting
through

116

A Agreeing
B Disagreeing

59 Meetings 5: discussion
techniques

126

A Interrupting, referring back, checking
understanding, avoiding confrontation
B Agreement, consensus or compromise?
C Concluding

60 Presentations 1: key ideas 128
A Types of presentation
B What makes a good presentation?
C Presentation tools and visual aids

114

61 Presentations 2: key steps 130
A Key steps: introduction
B Key steps: main part
C Key steps: closing

62 Presentations 3: audience
132
interaction
A Closing and dealing with questions
B Intercultural aspects

63 Negotiations 1: situations
134
and negotiators
A Types of negotiation
B Word combinations with ‘negotiations’
C Bargaining

64 Negotiations 2: preparing 136
A Preparing to negotiate
B Opening the negotiation
C Negotiating styles

65 Negotiations 3: win-win
A
B
C
D

138

Probing
Positive positions
Negative positions
Concessions and trade-offs

66 Negotiations 4: reaching
agreement
140
A Deadlock and mediators
B Agreements and contracts
C Checking the deal

Answer key

142

Index

161

Also available

176

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

7

Introduction
Who is this book for?
Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate is designed to help intermediate and upper-intermediate
learners of business English to improve their business vocabulary. It is for people studying
English before they start work and for those already working who need English in their job.
In addition to improving your business vocabulary, the book helps you to develop the language
needed for important business communication skills.
You can use the book on your own for self-study, with a teacher in the classroom, one-to-one or
in groups.

How is the book organized?
The book has 66 two-page units. The first 46 of these are thematic and look at the vocabulary of
business areas such as people, organizations, production, marketing and finance.
The other 20 units focus on the language of skills you need in business, such as those for
presentations, meetings, telephoning and negotiations.
The left-hand page of each unit explains new words and expressions, and the right-hand page
allows you to check and develop your understanding of the words and expressions, and how
they are used through a series of exercises.
There is cross-referencing between units to show connections between the same word or
similar words used in different contexts.
There is an Answer key at the back of the book. Most of the exercises have questions with only
one correct answer. But some of the exercises, including the Over to you activities at the end of
each unit (see below), are designed for writing and/or discussion about yourself and your own
organization or one that you know.
There is also an Index. This lists all the new words and phrases which are introduced in the book
and gives the unit numbers where the words and phrases appear. The Index also tells you how
the words and expressions are pronounced.

The left-hand page
This page introduces new vocabulary and expressions for each thematic or skills area. The
presentation is divided into a number of sections indicated by letters: A, B, C, etc., with simple,
clear titles.
In Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate, explicit reference is made to the business
material in the Cambridge International Corpus (CIC) – business pages of
newspapers, business textbooks, and business meetings and discussions. The texts
are stored in a database, which is searchable in various ways to reveal the patterns of business
usage. The database has been exploited to identify typical word combinations found in the data,
and there are notes about their relative frequency.
As well as explanations of vocabulary, there is information about typical word combinations and
grammar associated with particular vocabulary, for example operative verbs – the verbs that
are typically used with particular nouns. Again, the CIC has been a prime source of information
about these.

8

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

There are notes about differences between British and American English.
BrE: CV; AmE: résumé or resume

The right-hand page
The exercises on the right-hand page give practice in using the new vocabulary and expressions
presented on the left-hand page. Some units contain diagrams to complete, or crosswords.

‘Over to you’ sections
An important feature of Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate is the Over to you section at the
end of each unit. There are sometimes alternative Over to you sections for learners who are in
work and for those who are studying pre-work. The Over to you sections give you the chance
to put into practice the words and expressions in the unit in relation to your own professional
situation, studies or opinions.
Self-study learners can do the section as a written activity. In many Over to you sections,
learners can use the internet to find more information.
In the classroom, the Over to you sections can be used as the basis for discussion with the whole
class, or in small groups with a spokesperson for each summarizing the discussion and its outcome
for the class. The teacher can then get students to look again at exercises relating to points that have
caused difficulty. Students can follow up by using the Over to you section as a written activity, for
example as homework.
The Answer key contains sample answers for the Over to you questions.

How to use the book for self-study
Find the topic you are looking for by using the Contents page or the Index. Read through the
explanations on the left-hand page of the unit. Do the exercises on the right-hand page. Check
your answers in the Answer key. If you have made some mistakes, go back and look at the
explanations and the exercise again. Note down important words and expressions in your
notebook.

How to use the book in the classroom
Teachers can choose units that relate to their students’ particular needs and interests, for
example areas they have covered in coursebooks, or that have come up in other activities.
Alternatively, lessons can contain a regular vocabulary slot, where students look systematically
at the vocabulary of particular thematic or skills areas.
Students can work on the units in pairs, with the teacher going round the class assisting and
advising. Teachers should get students to think about the logical process of the exercises,
pointing out why one answer is possible and the others are not (where this is the case).
We hope you enjoy using Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate.

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

9

1
A

Work and jobs
What do you do?
To find out what someone’s job is, you ask ‘What do you do?’
Kerstin talks about her job:
‘I work for a large European car maker. I work on car design. In fact, I run the design
department and I manage a team of designers: 20 people work under me. It’s very
interesting. One of my main responsibilities is to make sure that new model designs are
finished on time. I’m also in charge of design budgets.
‘I deal with a lot of different people in the company. I’m responsible for coordination
between design and production: I work with managers at our manufacturing plants.’

Note
in charge of

+ noun

responsible for + verb + -ing
responsibility

+ infinitive / -ing

One of my responsibilities is to make sure that …
One of my responsibilities is making sure that …
You don’t say: ‘I’m a responsible.’

B

Word combinations with ‘work’
If you work or have work, you have a job. But you don’t say that someone has ‘a work’. Work is
also the place where you do your job. You don’t say for example, ‘at the work’ or ‘to the work’.
Here are some phrases with ‘work’.
The economy is growing fast and
more people are in work – have
a job – than ever before. The
percentage of people out of
work – without a job – has fallen
to its lowest level for 30 years.
Frank talks about his job:
‘I work in a bank in New York
City. I leave for work at 7.30
every morning. I go to work
by train and subway. I get to /
arrive at work at about 9. I’m
usually at work till 6. Luckily, I
don’t get ill very much so I don’t
often take time off work – away
from work due to illness.’

C

Types of job and types of work
A full-time job is one for the whole of the normal working week; a part-time job is for less
time than that. You say that someone works full-time or part-time.
A permanent job does not finish after a fixed period; a temporary job finishes after a fixed
period.
You talk about temporary work and permanent work.

10

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
1.1

Look at A opposite. Margaux is talking about her work. Correct the expressions in italics.
‘I work for a large French supermarket company. It is
an international company and (1) I work about the
development of new supermarkets abroad. (2) In fact,
I running the development department and (3)
I am manage for a team looking at the possibilities in
different countries. It’s very interesting. (4) One of my
main is to make sure that new supermarkets open on
time. (5) I’m also charged with financial reporting. (6)
I deal at a lot of different organizations in my work. (7)
I’m responsible of planning projects from start to finish.
(8) I work closely near our foreign partners, and so I
travel a lot.’

1.2

Complete each gap in the text with one of the prepositions from B opposite.
Rebecca lives in London and works in public relations. She leaves home for work at 7.30 am. She
drives (1)
work. The traffic is often bad and she worries about getting (2)
work
late, but she usually arrives (3)
work at around 9. She finishes work quite late, at about 8.
‘Luckily, I’m never ill,’ she says. ‘I could never take time (4)
work.’
She loves what she does and is glad to be (5)
they are (6)
of work.

1.3

work. Some of her friends are not so lucky:

What is being advertised in each of these job advertisements (1–6)? Use an expression from C
opposite, including the words in brackets. The first one has been done for you.
1

Librarian required for public library,
afternoons 2 till 6. (job)

Apply now

a part-time job

4

2

Teacher needed for summer course,
1 to 31 August. (job)

Personal assistant needed
for busy office, 9 am to
5.30 pm. (work)
Apply now

Apply now

5
3
Experienced barman wanted, 8 pm
until midnight. (work)

Apply now

Salesman required for showroom –
good prospects for right
Apply now
person. (work)

6
Lawyer wanted for law firm – long hours,
4 weeks holiday per year. (job)

Apply now

Over to you
If you work, answer these questions.

If you don’t work, answer these
questions.

• What do you do? What are you in charge of?
What are your responsibilities?
• What time do you leave for work? How long does
it take you to get to work? What time do you
arrive at work? Do you take a lot of time off work?

• What sort of job would you like
to do?
• What sort of routine would you
like to have?

• Why do some people prefer to work part-time or to
have temporary jobs?

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

11

2
A

Ways of working
Working hours

You can also say clock
in and clock out.

Note

Note

‘I’m an office worker in an insurance company. It’s a
nine-to-five job with regular working hours. I need my swipe
card to get into the office. The work isn’t very interesting, but
I like to be able to go home at a reasonable time.’
BrE: flexitime
AmE: flextime

‘I’m in computer programming. There’s a system of flexitime
in my company, which means we can work when we want,
within certain limits. We can start at any time till 11, and
finish as early as 3 – as long as we do enough hours each
month. It’s ideal for me as I have two young children.’

Swiping a card

‘I work in a car plant. I work in shifts and I have to clock on and clock off at the beginning
and end of every shift. I may be on the day shift one week and the night shift the next
week. It’s difficult changing from one shift to another. When I change shifts, I have problems
changing to a new routine for sleeping and eating. When the company is selling lots of cars,
they ask us to work overtime – more hours than usual for more money.’
‘I’m a commercial artist in an advertising agency. Unlike most other people in my
department who commute to work every day, I work from home and avoid the long
journeys that some commuters experience every day. That’s the benefit of teleworking or
telecommuting – working from home and using the computer and phone to communicate
with other people.’

B

Nice work if you can get it
All these words are used in front of job and work.
satisfying, stimulating, fascinating, exciting – the work is interesting and gives you
positive feelings
dull, boring, uninteresting, unstimulating – the work is not interesting
repetitive, routine – the work involves doing the same things again and again
tiring, tough, hard, demanding – the work is difficult and makes you tired

C

Nature of work

My work involves
I like / dislike / prefer / enjoy

12

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

+ noun
human contact
long hours
teamwork
+ -ing
working with figures
dealing with customers
solving problems

Exercises
2.1

Look at the six expressions (a–f) from A opposite. Which person (1–6) is most likely to do each
of the things described?
a work in shifts
b work under
a flexitime
system
c telecommute
d commute to
work
e clock in and out
at the same time
every day
f work overtime

2.2

1 A designer in a website design company. Has to be in the office,
but can decide when she wants to start and finish work each day.
2 A manager in a department store in a large city. Lives in the
country.
3 A construction worker on a building site where work goes on
24 hours a day.
4 A worker in a chocolate factory in the three months before
Christmas.
5 A technical writer for a computer company. Lives in the country
and visits the company offices once a month.
6 An office worker in a large, traditional manufacturing company.

Look at the words and expressions in B and C opposite. Five people describe their jobs. Match
the jobs (1–5) with the descriptions (a–e) and put the words in brackets into the correct
grammatical forms.
1 accountant

2 postwoman

3 flight attendant 4 software developer 5 teacher

a ‘Obviously, my work involves
(travel) a lot. It can be quite physically
(demand), but I enjoy
(deal) with customers, except when
they become tired and anxious about arriving. This doesn’t happen often, but it can be very
frustrating for us and the other passengers.’
b ‘I love my job. It’s very
(stimulate) and not at all
(repeat): no
two days are the same. The children are fine: you see them learn and develop. The parents can be
more of a problem.’
c ‘I was good at maths at school and I like
(work) with figures. But my job
is much less
(bore) and routine than people think. The work
(involve) a lot of human contact and teamwork, working with other managers.’
d ‘You’ve got to think in a very logical way. There’s a lot of teamwork between the developers.
The work can be mentally
(tire), but it’s very satisfying to write a program
that works.’
e ‘Of course, it involves getting up quite early in the morning. But I like
(be) out in
the open air. And you get a lot of exercise. I walk two or three miles every day.’

Over to you
If you work, answer these questions.

If you don’t work, answer these questions.

• Do you have a nine-to-five job? Do you have
to clock on and off? Is there a flexitime
system in your organization? Are there people
who do shiftwork in your company?

• What sort of working hours would you like
to have when you start working?

• Could you do your job working from home? If
so, would you like to?
• What do you like most about your job?
What do you like least?

• Would you like to work from home?
• What kind of job would you like? Complete
this sentence in five ways to talk about
yourself.
I’d like a job that involves …

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

13

3
A

Recruitment and selection
Recruitment
The process of finding people for particular jobs is recruitment or, especially in American
English, hiring. Someone who has been recruited is a recruit, or in AmE, a hire. The
company employs or hires them and they join the company.
A company may recruit employees directly or use outside recruiters, recruitment agencies
or employment agencies. Outside specialists called headhunters may be used to find
people for very important jobs and to persuade them to leave the organizations they already
work for. Key people recruited like this are headhunted in a process of headhunting.

B

Applying for a job
Fred is an accountant, but he was fed up with his old job. He looked
in the situations vacant pages of his local newspaper, where a local
supermarket was advertising for a new accountant’s position. He applied
for the job by completing an application form and sending it in.
Harry is a building engineer. He’d been working for the same company
for ten years, but he wanted a change. He looked at jobs with different
engineering companies on a jobs website. He made an application,
sending in his CV (curriculum vitae – a document describing your
education, qualifications and previous jobs, that you send to a
An application form
prospective employer) and a covering letter explaining why he
wanted the job and why he was the right person for it.

Note
Situation, post and position are formal words often used in job advertisements and applications.
BrE: CV; AmE: résumé or resume
BrE: covering letter; AmE: cover letter

C

Selection procedures
Dagmar Schmidt is the head of recruitment at a German
telecommunications company. She talks about the selection
process, the methods that the company uses to recruit people.
‘We advertise in national newspapers and on the internet. We look
at the backgrounds of applicants – their experience of different
jobs and their educational qualifications.

Note
Internet is sometimes written with a capital letter when it is a noun.
internet (noun): mostly BrE
Internet (noun): mostly AmE

A job interview

‘We invite the most interesting candidates to a group discussion. Then we have individual
interviews with each candidate. The head of the department is also present. We also give
the candidates written psychometric tests to assess their intelligence and personality.
‘After this, we shortlist three or four candidates. We check their references by writing to
their referees – previous employers, teachers, and so on that candidates have named in
their applications. If the references are OK, we ask the candidates to come back for more
interviews. Finally we offer the job to someone, and if they turn it down we have to think
again. (Some applicants may get other job offers at the same time as ours.) If they accept
it, we hire them. We appoint someone only if we find the right person.’
14

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
3.1

Complete the crossword with the correct form of words from A, B and C opposite.
1

2

3
4

5

6

7

8

3.2

Across
5 I phoned to check on my application, but they
said they’d already
someone. (9)
6 This job is so important; I think we need to
someone. (8)
8 The selection procedure has lasted three months,
but we’re going to
someone next
week. (7)
Down
1 and 2 I hope she
the job, because if
she
it
, we’ll have to start
looking again. (7, 5, 4)
3 The last applicant was very strong, but
I understand he’d had two other job
already. (6)
4 They’ve finally
a new receptionist. She
starts work next week. (5)
7 Computer programmers wanted. Only those with
UNIX experience should
. (5)

Now divide the words in 3.1 into two groups.
1 what a company personnel department does
2 what a person looking for work does

3.3

Replace the underlined phrases with correct forms of words and expressions from A, B and C
opposite.
Fred had already (1) refused two job offers when he went for (2) a discussion to see if he was
suitable for the job. They looked at his accountancy degree and contacted (3) previous employers
Fred had mentioned in his application. A few days later, the supermarket (4) asked him if he
would like the job and Fred (5) said yes.
Harry didn’t hear anything for six weeks, so he phoned the company. They told him that they
had received a lot of (6) requests for the job. After looking at the (7) document describing his
education, qualifications and previous jobs of the (8) people asking for the job and looking at
(9) what exams they had passed during their education, the company had (10) chosen six people
to interview and then given them (11) tests on their personality and intelligence. They had then
given someone the job.

Over to you
If you work, answer these questions.

If you’re a student, answer these questions.

• Where did you see the jobs advertised?

• When you applied for your course did you
use an online application form or send an
application in?

• What did you send to apply for the job?
• What was the selection procedure?

• Did you need to provide referees?
• Did you have an interview?

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

15

4
A

Skills and qualifications
Education and training
Two company managers, Kasia Gutowska and Nils Olsen, are talking.

B

KG:

The trouble with graduates – people who’ve just left university – is that their paper
qualifications are good. They might have qualifications in interesting subjects, but
they have no work experience. They just don’t know how business works.

NO:

I disagree. Education should teach people how to think, not train them for a particular
job. One of last year’s recruits graduated from Oxford University with a degree in
philosophy and she’s doing very well!

KG:

Philosophy’s an interesting subject, but for our company, it’s more useful to do
training in a practical subject: it’s better for us if you train as a scientist, and qualify
as a biologist or a doctor, for example.

NO:

Yes, but we don’t just need scientists. We also need good managers, which we can
achieve through in-house training – courses within the company. You know we put
a lot of money into management development, where managers regularly go on
specialized courses in leadership (see Unit 10), finance (see Unit 38), etc. You need to
acquire experience – get knowledge through doing things – for that. It’s not the sort
of thing you can learn when you’re 20!

Note

Note

In AmE, you can also say that someone
graduates from high school – the
school that people usually leave when
they are 18.

A master’s degree is a qualification you can get
after one or two years of graduate study.
A Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) is
a master’s degree in advanced business studies.

Skilled and unskilled
A skill is a particular ability to do something well, especially because you have learned and
practised it.
Jobs, and the people who do them, can be described as:
highly skilled, e.g. car designer
skilled, e.g. car production manager

semi-skilled, e.g. taxi driver
unskilled, e.g. car cleaner

You can say that someone is:
skilled at
or skilled in

C

+ noun
customer care
electronics

You can also say that someone is:
+ -ing
communicating
using Excel

good with

computers
figures
people

The right person
These words are often used in job advertisements. Companies look for people who are:
methodical, systematic and organized – working in a planned, orderly way
computer-literate – good with computers
numerate – good with numbers
motivated – very keen to do well in their job because they find it interesting
talented – very good at what they do
Self-starter and team player
self-starters; they must be proactive, self-motivated, or
are nouns. The other words in
self-driven – good at working on their own
bold are adjectives.
g team players – people who work well with other people

16

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Note

a
b
c
d
e
f

Exercises
4.1

Look at A opposite. Complete each sentence with the correct
word.
1 Ravi graduated
Mumbai University
a
degree
philosophy and politics.
2 He taught for a while, but didn’t like it. He wanted to get a
qualification
accountancy and decided to train
an accountant at evening classes.
3 He qualified
an accountant and joined a big
accountancy firm in its Mumbai office.
4 After he had acquired some experience, he went
a number of management courses to get
training
team-building and other skills.

4.2

Look at B opposite. Are these jobs generally considered to
be highly skilled, skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled? Use each
expression twice.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4.3

teacher
software engineer
car worker on a production line
cleaner
office cleaner
airline pilot
bus driver
office manager

Complete these extracts from job advertisements using words from C opposite.
1
You’ll be researching developments on the internet, so you have to be
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _-_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . You must be _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ , able to work
on your own initiative, and a _ _ _ _-_ _ _ _ _ _ _ . But as part of
a team of researchers, you’ll need to be a good _ _ _ _-_ _ _ _ _ _ too.

2

3
You’ll need to be
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ , as
you’ll be working
on financial
budgets.

4
As part of our sales team,
you’ll be working
independently, so you have to
be self-_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
and self-_ _ _ _ _ _ .

5
We need _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ journalists who are very good at
their job and extremely _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ – very keen to find
out as much as they can about news stories.

We’re looking for
someone who can
work on ten projects
at once, without being
told what to do. You
must be a
_ _ _ _-_ _ _ _ _ _ _ –
__________,
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ and
_________.

Over to you
Write an extract from a job advertisement for your job or one you would like to have, using words
from C opposite.

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

17

5
A

Pay and benefits
Wages, salary and benefits
‘My name’s Luigi and I’m a hotel
manager in Venice. I get paid a
salary every month. In summer,
we’re very busy, so we do overtime –
work a lot of extra hours. The pay for
this is quite good. Working in a hotel,
we also get some nice perks – for
example, free meals!’

‘I’m Ivan and I work as a waiter in Prague. I like my job even if I don’t earn very much: I get
paid wages every week by the restaurant. We get the minimum wage – the lowest amount
allowed by law. But we also get tips – money that customers leave in addition to the bill.
Some tourists are very generous!’
‘Hi, I’m Catherine, and I’m a saleswoman in luxury goods, based in Paris. I get a basic
salary, plus commission – a percentage on everything I sell. If I sell more than a particular
amount in a year, I also get a bonus, which is nice. There are some good fringe benefits
with this job: I get a company car, a BMW; there’s a health plan to pay the costs of medical
treatment if I get ill; and the company makes payments for my pension – money that I’ll
get regularly after I stop working. So, with the bonuses, the car, the health plan and the
pension, I’ve got a very nice benefits package. And the working conditions are good too:
I have a nice office and I don’t have to travel too much.’

B

Compensation 1
Catherine mentioned her pay and conditions. Remuneration and compensation are
formal words used to talk about pay and conditions, especially those of senior managers.
Remuneration package and compensation package are used especially in the US to talk
about all the pay and benefits that employees receive. For a senior executive, this may
include share options (BrE) or stock options (AmE), the right to buy the company’s shares
(see Unit 36) at low prices. There may be performance (-related) bonuses if the manager
reaches particular objectives for the company.

C

Compensation 2
Compensation is also used to talk about money and other benefits that someone receives
if they are forced to leave the organization, perhaps after a disagreement with other
managers in what newspapers call a boardroom row. This money is in the form of a
compensation payment or severance payment. If someone also receives benefits with
this, the payment and the benefits form a compensation package or severance package.
In Britain, executives with very high pay and benefits may be referred to as fat cats,
implying that they do not deserve this level of remuneration.

18

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
5.1

Xavier and Yvonne are talking about Xavier’s new job as a photocopier salesman. Sometimes,
they don’t use the exact names for things that they are talking about. Complete these
expressions, using items from A opposite.
1 X: I get paid every month, rather than every week.
Y: I see. You get a
, not wages.
2 X: I usually have to work late: I don’t get paid for it, but I do get a percentage for every
photocopier I sell.
Y: So you don’t get
, but you do get
. That’s good.
3 X: And the people in production get a
if they reach their targets.
Y: Oh right. They get an extra payment if they produce more than a certain amount.
4 X: And the extras are great: the company pays for medical treatment if we get ill and the
company restaurant is fantastic.
Y: Wow! The company
sound very nice.
5 X: And they’ve given me a
to go and visit clients.
Y: So you don’t have to buy a car then.
6 X: What’s more, there’s a very good scheme where the company pays in money for us to get
when we don’t work any more.
.
Y: Yes, it’s important to get a good
7 X: The total
is brilliant.
Y: Yes, all those extras are really worth having.

5.2

Which expressions from B and C opposite could be used to complete each of these newspaper
extracts?
1

2

KEVIN DAVIS QUITS AS MF GLOBAL CHIEF

3

When things get tough, senior
executives should get a pay rise,
right? Top executives at Kingfisher,
which owns B&Q, and at Vodafone
seem to think that directors should
be entitled to large amounts of extra
pay even when their companies are
doing badly.

PUBLIC ANGER AT BANKING EXECUTIVES’ PAY

Anger at the

4

s (2 possibilities) of
bank executives is high. Henry Waxman,
the California Democrat, this week sent
letters to nine of the biggest investment
banks asking why they have set aside
$108 billion for salaries and bonuses
in a year when they have received
$125 billion in government aid.

Underachieved? Have a
!

NEW THINKING
Following the UK government’s
rescue of the banks, voters will say,
‘If you could find the money to clear
up the mess left by a few greedy
,
then you can find the money to fund
this bus service / save this village
school / renationalize the railways.’

Over to you
In what order of attractiveness would you put these benefits in relation to your job or one that you
would like to have? Give your reasons.
salary

share options

company car

commission

pension

health plan

performance-related bonus

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

19

6
A

People and workplaces
Employees and management

finance

CEO

management

marketing

white-collar workers

white-collar
workers

labour
manual/blue-collar workers

supervisor

manual/bluecollar workers

shop floor

Note

The people who work for a company are on its payroll. They are its employees, personnel,
staff, workers or workforce. These words can also refer just to the people carrying out the
work of a company, rather than the management –
Workforce, work-force and
those leading and organizing the company.

B

work force are all possible.

Management and administration

C

Labour
You use labour to talk about everyone except the management who
works for a company, especially a company that makes things.

labour

costs
dispute
leader
relations
shortage
unrest

Note

A company’s activities may be spread over different sites in different places. A company’s most
important managers usually work in its head office or headquarters (HQ). Some managers
have their own individual offices, but often employees work in open-plan offices – large areas
where many people work. Administration or, informally, admin – the ordinary work supporting a
company’s activities – is often done in offices like these by administrative staff or support staff. For
example, those giving technical help to buyers of the company’s products are in technical support.
BrE: labour
AmE: labor

what companies have to pay for labour, rather than materials, etc.
a disagreement between management and labour
someone in charge of an organization that represents workers
the relationship between management and employees in general
a period when there are not enough people available to work
a period of disagreement between management and employees

Labor unions (AmE) and trade unions (BrE) defend the interests of workers.
When workers are not happy with pay or conditions, they may take industrial action:
a strike, stoppage or walk-out – workers stop working for a time
a go-slow – workers continue to work, but more slowly than usual
an overtime ban – workers refuse to work more than the normal number of hours

D

Personnel and HRM
In larger organizations there is a human resources department (HRD) that deals with pay,
recruitment, etc. This area is called human resources (HR) or human resource management
(HRM). Another, older, name for this department is the personnel department.

20

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
6.1

Complete the crossword with the correct form of words from A, B, C and D opposite.
1
3

4

2

5

6

7

8
9
10
12

11

13

14
15

Across
2 and 15 Office workers may be described this
way. (5, 6)
5 all of the people working for a company (5)
6 workers who use their hands are of this type
(6)
7 when people stop working to protest (6)
9 one of the people working for an
organization (8)
10 occasions when workers stop working in
order to protest: walk(4)
12 another name for the human resources
department (9)
13 workers seen as a group (6)

6.2

Down
1 Everyone working for a company is on this.
(7)
2 everyone, or everyone except top managers
(9)
3 These are trade in the UK and labor in the
US. (6)
4 and 15 across Manual workers are this, even
if they don’t wear this. (4, 6)
5 A place in a factory where the production
lines are. (9)
8 when people stop work to complain about
something (8)
14 and 11 Workers do this when they
intentionally produce less. (2, 4)

Manuel Ortiz is the founder of a Spanish computer sales company. Use the words in B and D
opposite to complete what he says about it.
‘I founded Computadoras Creativas 20 years ago. We started with a small (1) _ _ _ _ _ _ in
Madrid. Our (2) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ , our (3) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ is still here, but now we have sites
all over Spain, with about 500 employees. Many of the offices are (4) _ _ _ _-_ _ _ _ – everyone
works together. This includes managers to (5) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ – secretaries and
people who support the company’s activities, and people in technical (6) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ giving help
to customers over the phone.
Recruitment is taken care of in Madrid, by the (7) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ or (8) _ _ _ .’

Over to you
Answer these questions about the company you work for or would like to work for. Look at the
company website to help you.
• Where is its head office? How many sites does the company have? How many employees?
• Do people have their own offices or are there open-plan offices? Which do you or would you prefer
to work in?
Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

21

7
A

Companies and careers
Career paths
Many people used to work for the same organization until they reached retirement, the age
at which people retire – end their working life. Career paths were clear: you could work your
way up the career ladder, getting promotion to jobs that were more senior – more important
with greater responsibility. You would probably not be demoted – moved to a less senior job.

B

Company structure
Like many other companies, Tel Italia has reorganized and restructured in order to
become flatter – with fewer layers of management – and leaner – with fewer, more
productive employees. The number of management levels in the company hierarchy has
been reduced, and many managers have lost their jobs.
In other words, to
reduce costs and
cut the payroll (see
Unit 6), Tel Italia
has downsized and
delayered. The
company said that
downsizing and
restructuring were
necessary to reduce
costs, increasing
efficiency and profits.

C

Delayering

In-house staff or freelancers?

The way that an employee is doing their job is discussed
at performance reviews – regular meetings with their
manager.

D

Note

Companies that downsize often outsource many jobs previously done by in-house personnel:
outside companies clean the offices, transport goods, and collect money from customers. This
allows the companies to concentrate on their main business activities. Downsized companies
use more freelancers – independent people who work for several different companies – or
they may ask contractors to work for short periods on temporary contracts. They often
expect flexibility, with people moving to different jobs when necessary: but for many
employees, this means job insecurity – the feeling that they may not be in their job for long.
You can say freelancers
or freelances.

Leaving a company
To leave a company, you can resign or hand in your notice.
If you do something wrong and are forced to leave a company, you are: dismissed,
terminated, fired or sacked / given the sack.
If you’ve done nothing wrong, you are: laid off, made redundant or offered early retirement.

Note
You can also say that someone’s contract has been terminated.
Fired, sacked and given the sack are informal expressions. Sacked and given
the sack = BrE only.

Employees who are made redundant may get outplacement – advice about how to find
another job, retraining, etc.
22

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
7.1

Complete the tables with words from A, B and C opposite. The first one has been done as an example.
Noun

Verb

Noun

retirement

retire

seniority

demotion
lay-off

7.2

freelance
redundancy

dismissal

insecure

termination

flexible

Match the sentence beginnings (1–5) with the correct endings (a–e). The sentences all contain
words from A and B opposite.
1 Career paths aren’t what they used to be.
Companies won’t
2 He worked his way up from
3 The new management have restructured
and delayered the company,
4 We used to do printing in-house,
5 Employees are afraid their organizations
will be downsized

7.3

Adjective

a and that they will be replaced by temporary
workers, or made redundant by technology.
b take care of us for life any more. We have
to take care of ourselves.
c but now we outsource it.
d factory worker to factory manager.
e reducing the number of management levels in
the company hierarchy from five to three.

Carla used to work for an Italian magazine publishing company. She talks about how she lost
her job. Choose the correct form of the word in each case.

Edizione Fenice is a big magazine
publishing company. I was director of a monthly
magazine called Casa e Giardino.
Then Fenice was bought by an international
publishing group. We had to have regular
(review /
performance (1)
reviews / reviewer) with one of the new managers.
After a few months they started laying staff
(2)
(off / on / out). Our own
journalists were put on temporary
(3)
(contracts / contractual /
contracting) or replaced by (4)
(freelancer / freelancers / freelanced).

(6)
(7)

(flat / flatter / flatten) and
(lean / leant / leaner). So I
(redundant /
was made (8)
redundancies / redundancy). They offered to help me
to find another job with (9)
(outplacement / outplaced / outplacing) services, but
I refused.

(laid /
Then they started (5)
lying / laying) off more senior people like me. The
new owners said they wanted to make the company

Over to you
If you work, answer these questions.

If you study, answer these questions.

• Do you think you will work for the same
company until you retire? Why? / Why not?
• What kind of structure does your company
have?

• Do you think you will look for a job in a
company where you can work your way up the
career ladder until you retire, or do you think
you will work for a lot of different companies?

• What kind of work does your company
outsource?

• Do you know any companies which have
restructured or downsized?
Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

23

8
A

Problems at work
Discrimination
If people are treated differently from each other in an unfair way, they are discriminated against.
If a woman is unfairly treated just because she is a woman, she is a victim of sex
discrimination. In many organizations, women complain about the glass ceiling that
prevents them from getting further than a particular level.
If someone is treated unfairly because of their race, they are a victim of racial discrimination
or racism. Offensive remarks about someone’s race are racist and the person making them is
a racist.
Equal opportunities, positive discrimination
or affirmative action is when help is given in
education and employment to groups who were
previously discriminated against.
Some companies have a dignity at work policy
covering all the issues described in A and B.

B

Note
BrE: equal opportunities
BrE/AmE: positive discrimination
AmE: affirmative action

Bullying and harassment
If someone such as a manager bullies an employee, they use their position of power to hurt or
threaten the employee. Someone who does this is a bully. The bullying can often be verbal.
Sexual harassment is when an employee behaves sexually towards another in a way that
they find unwelcome and unacceptable. The related verb is harass.

C

Health and safety
Health and safety issues for people at work contribute to a bad working environment. The
government sends officials called health and safety inspectors to make sure that factories
and offices are safe places to work. They check what companies are doing in areas like:

a passive smoking

b repetitive strain
injury or RSI

e fire hazards

c dangerous
machinery

f heating and
air-conditioning

d hazardous
substances

g first aid

Of course, dangerous machinery and hazardous substances can cause industrial accidents.

Note
Compensation (see Unit 5) can also be used to mean money or other benefits that someone
receives after an injury caused by a work accident.
24

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
8.1

Complete these headlines and articles with expressions from A and B opposite. Use one
expression twice.
1

OFFICE MANAGER ACCUSED OF
A court heard today how an office worker was almost driven to suicide by a bullying office
manager. James Blenkinsop, 27, told how boss Nigel Kemp victimized him by shouting at
him, criticizing his work in front of others, tearing up his work and telling him to do it again.

2

NATIONAL RESTAURANT CHAIN FACES

CLAIMS

Four waitresses claim they were repeatedly
by male bosses in a branch of a
well-known national restaurant chain. All four waitresses said they were subjected to sexist
remarks at the restaurant.

3

JAPANESE WOMEN BREAK THROUGH
Naomi Tanaka, 23, last year started working on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as a trader.
and said she did
She complained about traditional
not want to be a ‘counter lady’ answering phones and serving tea at a Japanese bank.
Instead she got a job as a trader at Paribas, a French firm.

4

SHOP MANAGERESS IN

CASE

A clothing shop’s half-Burmese manageress, 24-year-old Marion Brown, claims her boss
remarks, and sacked her from her £110-a-week
continually made
job when she objected. She claims that the company that owns the shop has racially
against her.

5

ABOLISHED AT TEXAS LAW SCHOOL

Last year federal law court made affirmative action at the University of Texas law school
have said that it was a
illegal, and supporters of
‘disaster’. The University of Texas law school last year admitted a class that was 5.9 per cent
black and 6.3 per cent Hispanic. This year the black percentage stands at just over 0.7 and
the Hispanic at 2.3.

8.2

Match the employees’ complaints (1–7) with health and safety issues (a–g) in C opposite.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

I do a lot of data entry, and recently I’ve started getting really bad pains in my wrists.
My doctor says there’s something wrong with my lungs, but I’ve never smoked.
It’s either too cold and we freeze, or too hot and we all fall asleep.
There’s all this waste paper, but there no fire extinguishers in the building.
The containers are leaking – one day someone is going to get acid burns.
There are no safety guards on the machines – you could easily get your hand caught.
There are all these problems, but no-one is trained to give medical assistance.

Over to you
Think about the industry you work in or would like to work in. Look at a health and safety website,
for example the UK government site at www.hse.gov.uk, and identify key hazards in the industry.

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

25

9
A

Managers, executives and directors
Managers and executives: UK

Management
organigram

FUN AND SUN
H O L I D A Y S

non-executive directors
senior executives /
top executives /
executive directors
middle managers

chief financial director /
finance director
accounts department
manager

chairman / chairwoman
chief executive / managing director
marketing
director
sales
manager

human resources
director

IT
director

research
director

customer services
manager

line managers (in travel agency branches)
All the directors together are the board. They meet in the boardroom.
Non-executive directors are not managers of the company; they are outsiders, often directors
of other companies with specialist knowledge of the industry or of particular areas.
The marketing director is the head of marketing, the IT director is head of IT, etc.
These people head or head up their departments. Informally, the head of an activity, a
department or an organization is its boss.
An executive, or informally, an exec, is usually a high-level manager, as in senior executive.

Note
Executive can be used in other contexts to suggest luxury – as in executive car and
executive home. It can even be used for things that are not actually used by executives.

B

Managers and executives: US
non-executive directors

senior executives /
top executives /
executive directors

president
chief executive officer (CEO)
chief operating officer (COO)

chief financial officer (CFO)
vice president (VP) marketing
vice president (VP) human resources
vice president (VP) research

In the US, the top position may be that of chairman, chairwoman or president. This job is
often combined with the position of chief executive officer (CEO). Some companies have
a chief operating officer to take care of the day-to-day running of the company. The
finance director may be called the chief financial officer (CFO).
In a US company, the senior managers in charge of particular areas are often called
vice presidents (VPs).
26

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
9.1

Look at the executives and managers listed in A opposite. Match each task (1–6) with the
particular person most likely to be responsible for doing it.
1
2
3
4
5
6

9.2

Meet with advertising agency to discuss new advertisements for the company’s holidays.
Study possible new holiday destinations in detail.
Analyse last year’s profits in relation to the previous year’s.
Contact newspaper to advertise new jobs.
Deal with complaints from customers.
Discuss sales figures with sales team.

Who’s who on this company board? Look at B opposite and complete the diagram.
My name’s Maria Montebello, and I’m president and CEO.
We have some excellent people on our board, including
two who are not involved in day-to-day running of the
company: George Gomi and Julia Jones.

My name’s Stan Smith and it’s my job to look after the accounts.
I work closely with Clarissa Chang and Richard Roberts, as
they tell me what their departments need for marketing and
research, and I allocate them an annual budget.

My name’s Deirdre Dawes and I head up personnel, on the
same level in the company as Clarissa Chang and Richard
Roberts.

2

1

3
Non-executive director

Maria Montebello

4

5

6

7

Deirdre Dawes

Over to you
If you work, draw an organigram of your
organization and practise describing it to a
new colleague.

If you don’t work, think of a job you would like in
an organization and write about why you would
be good at the job.
Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

27

10
A

Businesspeople and business leaders
Businesspeople and entrepreneurs
A businessman, businesswoman or
businessperson is someone who works in
their own business or as a manager in an
organization.
An entrepreneur is someone who starts or
founds or establishes their own company.
Someone who starts a company is its
founder. An entrepreneur may found a series
of companies or start-ups. Entrepreneurial
is used in a positive way to describe the risktaking people who do this, and their activities.
Some entrepreneurs leave the companies
they found, perhaps going on to found more
companies. Others may stay to develop and
grow their businesses.

Note
The plural of businessperson is businesspeople. Businessperson and businesspeople can be
spelled as two words: business person, business people.
Found is a regular verb: past tense and past participle are founded.
Establishment is used to talk about the act of founding something as well as a particular
organization, or part of one.
Some English speakers believe it is not correct to use grow as a transitive verb in this context.

Note
Entrepreneur is used in combinations
such as internet entrepreneur.

B

Leaders and leadership
A large group of companies mainly owned by one person or family is a business empire.
Successful businesspeople, especially heads of large organizations, are business leaders,
or in slightly old-fashioned journalistic terms, captains of industry.
There is a lot of discussion about whether people like this are born with leadership skills,
or whether these can be taught.

C

Magnates, moguls and tycoons
People in charge of big business empires may be referred to, especially by journalists, as
magnates, moguls or tycoons. These words often occur in combinations such as these:
media magnate
property mogul
software tycoon

28

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
10.1

Use words from A and B opposite to complete the missing words.

T

he big place for people starting
their own companies – for
(1) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ – is, of
course, the internet. Take Sergey
Brin and Larry Page. They met while
doing their doctorates at Stanford,
where they were encouraged to
develop their mathematical research
on the world wide web. Brin and

10.2

Page are both very
(2) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . They
(3) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Google together in
1998: some of the investment in the
(4) _ _ _ _ _-_ _ came from Andy
Bechtolsheim, one of the founders
of Sun Microsystems.
Now Brin and Page are both very
rich, with their own Boeing 767. In

2006, Brin and Page appointed Eric
Schmidt to develop and (5) _ _ _ _
the business. Like many
entrepreneurs, they felt that they did
not have the (6) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
skills to head up and inspire a large
business (7) _ _ _ _ _ _ .

Who are these famous businesspeople? Use the expressions below to describe them.
electric car entrepreneur
property tycoon

e-commerce mogul
retail entrepreneur

social media website founder
banking entrepreneur

Güler Sabancı (b. 1955)

Cath Kidston (b. 1958)

Jack Ma (b. 1964)

Elon Musk (b. 1971)

Zhang Xin (b. 1965)

Mark Zuckerberg (b. 1984)

Over to you
• Who is your country’s most famous entrepreneur? What is this person famous for?
• In your opinion, are entrepreneurs born or made?

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

29

11
A

Organizations 1
Business and businesses
Business is the activity of producing, buying and selling goods and services. A business,
company or firm, or more formally a concern, is an organization that sells goods or
services. Large companies considered together are referred to as big business.
You can talk about a company or a particular activity as an enterprise, especially to
emphasize its risk-taking nature.
Businesses vary in size, from the self-employed person working on their own, through the
small or medium enterprise (SME) to the large multinational with activities in several
countries.
A large company, especially in the US, is a corporation. The adjective is corporate, used to
talk about a big company – or big companies in general. Corporate is often used in these
combinations:
culture
ladder
headquarters
logo
image
profits

corporate

B

the way a company’s employees think and act
the different levels of management in a company
a company’s main office
a symbol used by a company on its products, advertising, etc.
all the ideas, opinions, etc. that people have about a company
the money made by companies

Commerce
Commerce is used:
to refer to business in relation to other fields: ‘literature, politics and commerce’.
for government departments that deal with business: US Department of Commerce.
in the names of organizations that exist to help business: chambers of commerce.
to refer to business on the internet: electronic commerce or e-commerce.
The adjective commercial describes money-making business activities: for example,
commercial airline, commercial artist, commercial disaster.

C

Enterprise
In 1970s Britain, there were state-owned or government-owned companies in many
different industries, such as car manufacturing. Some industries, such as coal and
electricity, had been nationalized – they were entirely state-owned. In the 1980s, the
Thatcher government believed that nationalized companies were inefficient, so many
of them were privatized by selling them to investors. Supporters of privatization
believed that bureaucracy – the system for running government departments, with its
rigid rules and slow decisions – was not good for business: state-run companies were too
bureaucratic.
Enterprise is used in a positive way to talk about business, emphasizing the use of money
to invest in new activities with a certain amount of risk involved. Enterprise is often used in
these combinations:
free
private





enterprise

culture
enterprise

economy
zone

30

business activity owned by individuals rather than the state
when people are encouraged to make money through their own
activities and not rely on the government
an economy where there is an enterprise culture
part of a country where business is encouraged because there are less
strict laws, lower taxes, etc.

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
11.1

Match the two parts of these sentences containing expressions from A opposite.
1 Managers who themselves often
worked long hours in order to
climb the corporate
2 Analysts forecast a slowing of
economic growth because of
lower corporate
3 3M continues to improve its
corporate
4 Retailer Best Buy is allowing
employees at its corporate
5 The only corporate
6 Listening to customers is part of
the corporate

11.2

Someone is talking about words and expressions in B and C opposite. Which are they referring
to each time?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

11.3

a image by showing environmental
leadership.
b logo in view was the Haagen Dazs name
on three table umbrellas.
c profits, capital gains taxes and slow
job growth.
d ladder may demand the same thing from
their employees.
e culture at Lowe’s, and managers use a
variety of methods to ensure that
it’s happening.
f headquarters to set their own hours and
work outside the office.

They’re not companies in which people can buy shares. (3 expressions)
It carries passengers and goods in order to make a profit.
It’s so slow and inefficient: no way to run a business!
It’s going to be used for offices and factories, not houses.
It’s owned and run by private companies, and the programmes are interrupted by advertising.
We need to encourage this in order for the economy to grow and modernize.
He does advertisements: you can’t find his work in art galleries.
It was an artistic success, but unfortunately it lost a lot of money.

Use expressions with ‘enterprise’ from C opposite to complete this text.
or
Margaret Thatcher often talked about the benefits of (1)
(2)
. She said that her achievement was to establish an
(3)
in Britain, an economy based on free enterprise. She
wanted a society where people were encouraged to start their own companies and where it was
acceptable to get rich through business: an (4)
.
In some areas, the government reduced the number of laws and regulations to encourage
businesses to move there. Businesses were encouraged to set up in the Docklands of London, for
example. The Docklands were an (5)
.

Over to you
Write short reports about the issues below. Research them on the internet if necessary.
• How big is the public sector in your country? Do people who work in it have good working
conditions compared to those in the private sector?
• In your country, which of these industries are in the public sector, and which are in the private
sector? Which have been privatized?
bus transport

electricity supply

postal services

rail transport

telephone services

water supply

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

31

12
A

Organizations 2
Self-employed people and partnerships
Oscar is a freelance graphic designer – a freelancer. He likes the freedom of working for
himself. To use the official term, he’s a sole trader.
People such as designers and journalists are freelancers (see Unit 7), whereas builders and
plumbers are normally referred to as being self-employed.

Note

Jane and Miranda are architects who have set up their own architecture partnership.
A lot of professional people like lawyers, accountants, and so on work in partnerships.
They are partners – there are no shareholders (see Unit 32) in the organization apart
from the two of them.

B

Sole owner and sole proprietor are both used in
BrE and AmE. Sole trader is not used in the US.

Limited liability
Jane and her partners have limited liability: if the partnership goes bankrupt – runs
out of money – the people to whom the partnership owes money can take the company’s
assets to pay the debts, but they can’t take personal assets such as the partners’ houses or
cars. It’s a limited liability partnership (LLP).
Jon Robertson is managing director and main
shareholder of a small electronics company in
Scotland called Advanced Components Ltd. ‘Ltd’
means limited company, with limited liability.
Howard Schultz is president of Starbucks Inc.
‘Inc’ stands for Incorporated. This shows that it
is a corporation – used especially in the US for
companies with limited liability, and also used in
the UK in the names of some big companies.
Some British companies include PLC as part of their
name. This means that the company is a public
limited company, and its shares are bought and
sold on the stock exchange (see Unit 36).

C

Mutuals

Howard Schultz

Some companies like certain life insurance companies are mutuals. People buying
insurance with the company are its members and there are no shareholders. Profits are
theoretically owned by the members.
In Britain, there are mutuals called building societies, which lend money to people who want
to buy a house. But a lot of building societies are changing into public limited companies with
shareholders: many have demutualized in a process of demutualization (see Unit 35).

D

Non-profit organizations
Organizations with ‘social’ aims such as helping those who are sick or poor, or encouraging
artistic activity, are non-profit organizations (BrE) or not-for-profit organizations (AmE).
They are also called charities and form the voluntary sector: they rely heavily on
volunteers – unpaid workers. For example, a charity like Médecins sans Frontières is
managed by paid professionals, and together they put a lot of effort into fundraising
activities. These activities encourage people to give or donate money, clothes, food or time
to help the organization. These donations are essential for the organization to do its work.

32

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
12.1

Look at the words in A and B opposite. Which type of organization is each of these?
1 A group of engineers who work together to provide consultancy and design services. There are no
outside shareholders.
2 A large British engineering company with 30,000 employees. Its shares are bought and sold on the
stock market.
3 An American engineering company with outside shareholders.
4 An engineer who works by herself by providing consultancy. She works from home and visits
clients in their offices. (3 possibilities)
5 An independent British engineering company with 20 employees. It was founded by three
engineers, who are shareholders and directors of the company. There are five other shareholders
who do not work for the company.

12.2

Complete this newspaper article with expressions from C opposite.

NEWSONLINE
Home

News

Wo r l d

Business

Food

Te c h n o l o g y

Science

Angry scenes as members reject (1)
There were angry scenes at the Suffolk
’s
(2)
annual meeting as the society’s
rejected by two to one
(3)
a recommendation from its board that the
. Members
society be (4)
had travelled from all over the country to
attend the meeting in London. The Suffolk’s
chief executive, Mr Andrew Davies, said,
‘This is a sad day for the Suffolk. We need to

12.3

to bring the society
(5)
forward into the 21st century. Our own
resources are not enough and we need capital
from outside shareholders.’
Gwen Armstrong, who has saved with the
Suffolk for 32 years, said, ‘Keeping
status is a great victory.
(6)
Profits should stay with us and not go to
outside shareholders.’
Comment

Like

Match the sentence beginnings (1–5) with the correct endings (a–e). The sentences all contain
expressions from D opposite.
1 British people donate around £4 a week each
on average to charities
2 She organized fundraising
3 Voluntary sector employees earn five to
ten per cent
4 Non-profit organizations are not to be confused
5 Research shows that volunteers give the best
service

a with loss-making companies!
b and many volunteer to give their
skills too.
c parties for the charity.
d when they are helping people in
their own social class.
e less than they would in the private
sector.

Over to you
Which non-profit organizations are well-known in your country? What do they do? How do
they raise money?

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

33

13
A

Manufacturing and services
Manufacturing and services
Here are some of the manufacturing
industries that make up the manufacturing
sector.
aerospace

planes and space
vehicles

cars (BrE)
automobiles (AmE)

cars

computer hardware

Here are some of the services or service
industries that make up the service
sector.
call centres (BrE)
call centers (AmE)

dealing with orders,
complaints, etc. from
customers by phone

catering

restaurants, bars, etc.

computers, printers,
etc.

computer software

instructions for
computers

construction

buildings

financial services

defence (BrE)
defense (AmE)

weapons

banking, insurance,
etc.

healthcare

medical care

electronics

mobile phones, etc.

leisure

cinemas, sport, etc.

food processing

canned, frozen, etc.
foods

media

books, newspapers,
film, television

household goods

washing machines,
refrigerators, etc.

property (BrE)
real estate (AmE)

buying, selling and
managing buildings

pharmaceuticals

medicines

retail

shops

steel

a strong metal used in
the manufacturing of
machinery and cars

telecommunications

phone, internet
services

tourism

travel and holidays

textiles

cloth and clothes

Note
You use all these names in front of industry to talk about particular industries. You usually drop
the s from cars, automobiles, pharmaceuticals and textiles: the automobile industry, etc.

B

Countries and their industries
Industry (uncountable) is the production of materials and goods. An industry is a particular
type of business activity. The related adjective is industrial. Here is how industry has
developed in Brazil.

34

1950s and 60s

1970–2000

Today

In 1950, Brazil was a relatively
poor country, with most people
living and working on the land.
The government decided to
industrialize, and one of the
new emerging industries in the
60s was the building of aircraft.

The Brazilian economy
developed in many different
areas: growth industries ranged
from light industries such as
textiles and telecommunications
equipment to heavy industries
like steel production.

Brazil’s economy is diversified,
with many different industries:
the service sector makes up
70.8 per cent, industry 24 per cent
and agriculture 5.2 per cent.

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
13.1

Look at A opposite. Which industry or service is each of these companies in?
1 Microsoft
2 Terra

13.2

5 Kia
6 Time Warner

7 Banco Santander
8 Gap

A company will have to deal with problems that are specific to its industry. Match each
problem (1–5) with one of the industries in A opposite.
1
2
3
4
5

13.3

3 Glaxo Smith Kline
4 Boeing

buying a new building and being unable to find people to rent it
holidaymakers arriving to find that their hotel is not finished
lending to someone who cannot repay the loan
selling weapons to governments that people do not approve of
making drugs that poor countries cannot afford

Complete the crossword with the correct form of words from A and B opposite.
1

2
3
4

5

6

7

8
9

10

11

12

13

Across
1 plane and rocket industry (9)
3 metal industry (5)
4 an industry that doesn’t sell goods (7)
6 making things (13)
8 television, music, the internet (5)
9 related to industry or industries (10)
11 describing a new industry (8)
12 describing an industry that is getting
bigger (6)
13 making drugs (15)

Down
1 making cars: the
industry (10)
2 making weapons (7)
5 serving food and drink, rather than
making them (8)
7 keeping people well:
care (6)
10 making televisions rather than steel:
industry (5)

Over to you
• What products are manufactured in your country, and where?
• How diversified is your country’s economy?

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

35

14
A

The development process
Market research
In designing products and services, market research – finding out what
people really want – is very important.
There are five ways of carrying out market research:
Surveys are of four types:
1 In-person surveys can show an example or sample of a new
product, but they are expensive.
2 Telephone surveys are less expensive, but people do not like to
In-person survey
be called up and asked questions.
3 Mail surveys have low response rates because few people send
the surveys back; they are inexpensive, however.
4 Online surveys are simple and inexpensive, but usually
unpredictable as there is no control over the pool or selection of
people that take part in this kind of survey.
Focus groups usually last 1–2 hours. A moderator uses specially
prepared questions to ask a group. It takes at least three groups to
get accurate results.
Personal interviews usually last about an hour – they are normally
Focus group
recorded. As with focus groups, not doing enough interviews gives
inaccurate results.
Observations involve observing consumers in action by videoing them in stores,
watching them at work, or observing how they use a product at home.
Field trials involve placing a new product in selected stores to test customer response
under real-life selling conditions.
See Unit 15 for more on development and Unit 21 for more on marketing.

B

Development and launch
When software developers (see Unit 15) have finished the beta version – first version –
of a program, they release this on the internet and users are asked to try it out and to
identify bugs or problems.
Car designers use CAD/CAM (computer-assisted design / computer-assisted
manufacturing) to help develop and test the first versions or prototypes of the new
product.
Researchers in laboratories may take years to develop new drugs, testing or trialling
them in trials to show not only that they are effective, but also that they are safe. Drugs
need to be made in large numbers on an industrial scale before they can be sold.
Rollout is the process of making a product available, perhaps in particular places to test
reaction.
Product launch is the moment of truth when a product is officially made available for sale.
If a design defect or design fault is found in a product after it has been launched, the
company may have to recall it, asking those who have bought the product to return it,
perhaps so that the defect can be corrected.

Note
Design defect, design fault and design flaw all mean the same thing, but the first of
these is the most frequent.
Testing and trialling (BrE) / trialing (AmE) are both used to talk about people trying new
products and services. The noun trial is used especially to talk about testing the
effectiveness of new drugs, for example in the expression clinical trial.
36

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
14.1

Which expression in A opposite does the underlined word refer to in each item (1–6)?
1 It lasts up to two hours and has someone asking specific questions, but just one is not normally
considered enough. focus group
2 These are useful because you can see how people actually use the product.
3 These can take different forms – some are more efficient than others at getting information about
what people want.
4 He or she organizes the discussion in a focus group.
5 These cause problems for one type of survey, which mean that they might not be reliable.
6 With these, you can examine how people react when they see the product on the shelves.

14.2

Three people are talking about their work in product development. Correct the mistakes in
the words in italics, using expressions from A and B opposite.
1 ‘(a) Market researches showed that there was a real need for this service on our webpage, but
before offering it, we had to test it in a (b) beta copy with small groups of users over several
months to eliminate all the bugs. Even so, after the (c) product lunch, some users said they could
get into other people’s email accounts!’
2 ‘Our (d) searchers have shown that our new diet drink can make you slimmer and the
(e) focal groups said they liked the taste, but first we had to prove to the authorities that it
was (f) secure. Another problem was making the drink on an (g) industrial level: at first we
could only make it in small quantities in the laboratory, but making it in bigger quantities
was impossible.’
3 ‘At our research centre in Toulouse in France, the (h) designators develop the prototypes. People
think that my job of flying new aircraft is dangerous, but there is so much (i) proving on computer
first, that all the danger has been eliminated by the time I fly the plane.
(j) CAM/CAD means that all the process of design and manufacture is much quicker than before.’

14.3

Complete this talk by a marketing specialist using these words from A and B opposite.
consumer

design

groups

launch

market

recall

surveys

A few years ago a famous car company launched a completely new car. They’d done years of
technical research and (1)
research with focus (2)
and
(3)
panels, and analysis of responses
to questionnaires and (4)
. Then
came the (5)
. Sales of the car were
very good until a Swedish newspaper reported the
results of its ‘elk test’. They found that the car had a
tendency to tip over if you turned quickly to avoid
an elk. This was due to a (6)
fault
in the car, so they had to (7)
all the
cars they’d sold in order to correct the fault.

Over to you
• What does a pharmaceutical company need to do before it can release a new drug?
• What kind of surveys have you taken part in?
• What will a company do if they find a problem in a product after the launch? And why
might this be a big problem?

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

37

A

B

Innovation and invention
Innovation and invention
Verb

Noun: concept
(uncountable)

Noun: thing
(countable)

Noun:
person

design – to make plans or drawings for how
something is to be made
develop – to make a new idea become
successful, for example by making or
improving a product
innovate – to think of new ideas, methods,
products, etc.
invent – to design and make something for
the first time

design

a design

a designer

development

a development

a developer

innovation

an innovation

an innovator

invention

an invention

an inventor

Research and technology
Google carries out research and development (R&D) at its
research centre in Mountain View, California. Its laboratories
are some of the most innovative in the computer industry.

Note

15

BrE: research centre
AmE: research center

Google has made many new breakthroughs – innovations. Users can try out these
products before they are released in their final version.
The company is a leader in the technology of internet search. They are at the cutting
edge or leading edge of this technology – none of their competitors has better products
than them. Everything they do is state-of-the-art – using the most advanced techniques
available.
Of course, the hi-tech products of today become the low-tech products of tomorrow.
Products that are no longer up-to-date because they use old technology are obsolete.
Like all companies, Google never wants to get into that situation: they want to develop
technology that is future-proof.

Note
Cutting edge is used about three times as much as leading edge. Both are often used
as adjectives, e.g. cutting-edge products, leading-edge technology.

C

Patents and intellectual property

Other companies may pay to use a design under
licence in their own products. These payments may
be referred to as royalties.

Note

Information or knowledge that belongs to an individual or company is proprietary. A
product developed using such information may be protected in law by patents so that
others cannot copy its design.

BrE:
AmE:

Noun
a licence
a license

Verb
to license
to license

In publishing, if a text, picture, etc. is copyright, it
cannot be used by others without permission: this is copyright infringement. An example
of this is illegal downloading of music, films and software from the internet: this is piracy.
Another form of piracy is when fake products, often luxury products such as Rolex or
Chanel, are sold without the permission of the company that owns the brand name (see
Unit 22) or trademark – a recognizable symbol used on the product.
The area of law relating to patents, copyright and trademarks is intellectual property.

38

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
15.1

Complete this webpage using these expressions from A and B opposite.
cutting edge
release

develop
state-of-the-art

developed
technologies

development
technology

innovation

NEWSONLINE
Home

News

Wo r l d

Business

Imagine being able to work on products across
all business groups of Microsoft. You can do it
here at the Microsoft India Development Center
in Hyderabad, a center for true
(1)
! MSIDC is located in a
50-acre (2)
campus. It is
Microsoft’s largest product
(3)
center outside the
headquarters in Redmond, and is recognized
as an industry leader with teams working at the
(4)
,
developing (5)
and

15.2

Food

Te c h n o l o g y

Science

products for millions of Microsoft customers
worldwide. MSIDC has (6)
many core products and technologies for the
global market since its inception in 1998. Our
teams have end-to-end responsibility for every
product or (7)
they
(8)
. They own the strategy,
gather customer requirements from across the
world, plan different versions, and then design,
test and (9)
the product for
the market.
Comment

Like

Match the expressions (1–10) containing words in C opposite with their meanings (a–j).
1 copyright
infringement
2 intellectual
property
3 patent application
4 proprietary
information
5 royalty payment
6 licensing agreement
7 illegal download
8 piracy
9 trademark
10 brand name

a a payment made to the owner of a design by someone else who
uses it, or to an author by a publisher
b an arrangement between the owner of a design and another
organization, allowing its use in exchange for payment
c a name or symbol used on a product
d an occasion when an inventor asks the authorities to officially
recognize an invention as their property
e designs, ideas, etc. that belong to someone
f a name used on a product
g the whole activity of using designs, text, pictures or copying
products without permission
h an occasion when someone makes an illegal copy of music, etc.
from an internet site
i the law relating to designs, ideas, etc. that belong to someone
j an occasion when someone uses another’s text, pictures, etc.
without permission

Over to you
• Name a product that has become obsolete and suggest why that happened.
• How do companies try to prevent illegal downloading of music and films? Will they
ever succeed completely?

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

39

16
A

Products and services
Products
A product can be: something natural, e.g. wood, oil, paper; something made to be sold,
e.g. cars, computers, clothes; a service, e.g. broadcasting, insurance.
Produce (uncountable) normally refers to agricultural products such as crops or fruit.

B

Noun: things

Noun: company or
country

Verb

Noun: activity

(manufactured)
products / goods
(see Unit 17)
(agricultural)
produce / products
services

maker /
manufacturer /
producer
producer

make / manufacture /
produce

manufacture / manufacturing /
production

produce

provider

provide

manufacture / manufacturing /
production
provision

Mass production
Car production started in workshops where each car was individually hand-made.
Producing cars like this was a craft industry. It was very labour-intensive – it took a lot of
work to produce each car.
Then, in 1913, Henry Ford had the idea of an assembly line or production line at the Ford
manufacturing plant in Detroit: a team of workers were responsible for each part of the
manufacturing process, which meant that the plant could make cars in very large numbers –
it could churn them out.
Today, the same system is used in manufacturing, but
with the addition of industrial robots. The machines are
expensive but very cost-effective – they produce a lot in
relation to what they cost. These robots are part of the
CAD/CAM system of computer-assisted (or computeraided) design and manufacturing (see Unit 14).

Note
BrE: labour-intensive; AmE: labor-intensive
A plant can also be referred to as a factory or a works, but works is a slightly old-fashioned word.

C

Capacity and output
The number or type of things that a company, plant, industry or country produces is its
output. Productivity is a measure of the number of things produced in relation to the
number of employees. When there is high output per employee, productivity is high.
The maximum amount that a particular company, plant or industry can produce is its
capacity. If it is actually producing this amount, it is working at full capacity.

Note
There is overcapacity, excess capacity, spare capacity or surplus capacity if there is
too much capacity in relation to what is required. The expressions are given in their
order of frequency. These expressions are also used in service industries.

If too many things are being produced by a particular industry in relation to the number of people
who want to buy them, there is overproduction. If far too many things are produced, there is a
surplus or glut of these things. If not enough goods are being produced, there is a shortage.
40

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

Exercises
16.1

Complete the sentences with grammatically correct forms of the words in the table in A
opposite. (The number in brackets indicates the number of different possible answers.)
1 A lot of mobile phone
(3 possibilities) takes place in China, but Nokia still
(3 possibilities) them in Finland too, so Finland is a
(3 possibilities) of mobile phones.
2 India is important for call centres, but it is also emerging as a
of
of all kinds, including accountancy.
3 Russia is a major oil
and also important for the
of gas.
4 The United Kingdom is a big
of legal and financial services.
5 Brazil is still the world’s biggest coffee
, but coffee is also
in
many other countries, including new ones such as Vietnam.
6 With the increase in medical tourism, Thailand is emerging as an important centre for the
of healthcare services to people from other countries.

16.2

Look at B opposite. Rearrange these sections of a short
presentation about manufacturing into a logical order.
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h

16.3

work. Of course, we still have a large number of assemblyplant producing TVs in Singapore. We have two production
My name’s George Chien, and I’m director of a manufacturing
lines working 24 hours a day. CAD/
intensive. But with the help of computerline workers, so it’s quite labourCAM and robots do some of the assembly
assisted design and automation, productivity is increasing.

Match the headlines (1–4), containing words from C opposite, with extracts of the articles they
relate to (a–d).
1

3

AIRLINE

FOOD SHORTAGES HIT

REPORTS BIG
PRODUCTIVITY RISE

EASTERN AFRICA
2

4
LOCAL PLANT AT

TOO MUCH
a

FULL CAPACITY
c
Ryanair is running more flights with fewer
pilots and staff. That was the message
from Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary to
shareholders yesterday …

Rainfall has been below average in this
part of Africa for the past five years. Not
enough food has been grown and now
there are food …

b

d
The plant has the capacity to produce
3,000 computers a week, and it’s
producing 3,000. That’s the good
news …

There has been too much construction in
the city centre, and now there is a lot of
office space standing empty …

Over to you
Are hand-made products better than mass-produced products?

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

41

17
A

Materials and suppliers
Inputs
Dyson makes vacuum cleaners. It takes raw materials like steel
and plastic, and makes some of the components – or parts – used
in its products. (Other components are made by other companies.)
Here are some typical combinations:
aerospace
automotive
car
computer
electronic

components

replacement
spare

parts

Materials and parts are just some of the inputs. The others are labour – workers and
managers – and capital – money. Knowledge is also important because Dyson is a leader
in vacuum technology.
Vacuum cleaners that are in the course of being made are work-in-progress. At any
one time, Dyson has goods (see Unit 16) worth millions of dollars in its factories and
warehouses; these are both the materials and components used to make its products, and
its finished goods – the products that have been made.
Quantities of raw materials, components, work-in-progress and finished goods in a
particular place are stocks.

Note
BrE: work-in-progress; AmE: work-in-process
BrE: stocks; AmE: inventories
Goods is rarely used in the singular, except in specialized economics contexts.

B

Suppliers and outsourcing
Dyson has its own manufacturing operation, but it works with its suppliers – companies that
provide materials and components. Some companies refer to their suppliers as partners.
Note

The company uses subcontracting – which means
using outside suppliers to provide components and
services. In other words, it uses outsourcing rather
than doing these activities in-house – within the company.

C

Outside is the most frequently
occurring adjective in front
of suppliers.

Just-in-time
It costs money to keep components and goods available for
customers to buy in stock. Stocks have to be financed – paid
for. They also have to be stored – kept in special buildings called
warehouses – and handled – moved from one place to another.
So Dyson is asking its suppliers to provide components just-intime – when they are needed.

Note

This is part of lean production or lean manufacturing, in
which products are made in the most efficient way – doing
things as quickly and cheaply as possible, without waste.

42

Lean production is about as frequent as
lean manufacturing.

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

A warehouse

Exercises
17.1

Use words from A opposite to label the diagram.
Inputs

1

9

2

3
4
5
6

8

10

7

17.2

Match the sentence beginnings (1–6) with the correct endings (a–f) containing expressions from
B opposite.
1 The computer manufacturer
is cutting back on in2 The poor standard of
some subcontractors’
3 Retail giants Sharks Ltd
have decided to
4 Late deliveries from
outside
5 Gruma has manufacturing
6 Lilly and its partners

17.3

a maintenance is worrying train operating
companies.
b spent $157 million on the Cymbalta advertising
campaign.
c house production work in a bid to reduce costs and
increase efficiency.
d outsource canteen and cleaning services, to focus
better on its buying and selling activities.
e suppliers are causing delays in production, the Azco
group claims.
f operations on five continents, and its products are
sold in more than 50 countries.

Replace the words in italics with the correct forms of words from C opposite.
1

Let’s get the materials only when we need them to keep costs down.

2

It’s diff icult to find the right special buildings to put our finished goods in.

3

You have to decide well in advance how to pay for all this.

4

It’s very important that we keep these components at the right temperature.

5

The company found that using couriers on bicycles was a very quick and effective way
to deliver documents in big cities.

6

They want to introduce a system of making things efficiently without waste.

Over to you
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the following?
• outsourcing
• asking for components ‘just-in-time’

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

43

18
A

Business philosophies
Mass customization
Production lines (see Unit 16) are good
for mass production – producing large
numbers of similar products. Manufacturers
try to make standard products, with few
variations, that as many people as possible
will want to buy. Standardization is the
most important factor.
Custom-built or tailor-made products,
where each product is made to meet the
specifications, requirements or needs
(see Unit 21) of a particular customer, are
more expensive to produce, of course.

Custom-built bicycles

The management thinker Joseph Pine and others talk about the possibilities of mass
customization, where products are made in large quantities, but each one is made to the
specifications of the buyer – the person or organization buying it. Dell Computers, where
each computer is made for a particular buyer, is the best-known example of this.

B

Wikinomics
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything is a book by Don Tapscott and
Anthony D. Williams. In it, they explain that Wikinomics is a form of mass collaboration,
where companies have large numbers of people working together on the internet to solve
problems and develop products. This is totally unlike current business methods and the
authors predict that it will be a key to business success in the future. It is like an extreme
form of outsourcing (see Unit 17). They say that customers who contribute to the design
and development of products should be called prosumers – they work together to make
things in a process of peer collaboration and co-creation.

C

The long tail
Another challenge to mass production is the long tail. In The Long Tail: Why the Future of
Business is Selling Less of More, Chris Anderson says that the mass production model – way
of doing things – does not apply to many products, such as selling books and music on the
internet. In a large catalogue of items (see Unit 22), the cost of selling the least popular
item is only slightly more than selling the most popular. Amazon has used this model to
great advantage, profitably selling small numbers of specialized books, as well as large
numbers of popular ones. Economies of scale and the learning curve (see Unit 28), where
the cost of a product comes down in relation to the amount produced, do not apply.

D

Benchmarking
Jim is production manager at an electricity power station in
Australia. He says, ‘We use a system called benchmarking to
compare our performance to performance levels in other power
stations. We’ve recently been to the UK to see how the best power
stations operate, to see the best practice in the industry, and to
copy it. We’ve managed to halve the number of workers, and now
our productivity is as good as the best power stations in the UK.’
Benchmarking can be seen as another form of collaboration – people
and companies working together. Of course, a company will want to
hold on to its industrial secrets – prevent competitors from obtaining
information about its better performance in a particular area.

44

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

A power station

Exercises
18.1

Look at A, B, C and D opposite. Which business philosophy is each of these things an
example of?
1 A gold mining company makes information about its mines available on the internet. Anyone can
analyse the information to suggest where the company may find gold. If gold is found in the place
that they suggest, the person gets a prize.
2 A telephone company looks at other telephone companies to see which one issues the lowest
number of bills to customers with mistakes in them. It then copies the methods of this company
to reduce the number of mistakes in its own bills.
3 An internet site used to stop selling particular products if none were sold for a year. Now it makes
all its products available indefinitely.
4 On its website, a bicycle manufacturer allows each buyer to specify exactly what sort of bicycle he
or she wants.

18.2

Match the sentence beginnings (1–6) with the correct endings (a–f). The sentences all contain
words and expressions from B opposite.
1 Wikinomics describes a scenario
where the post-industrial age
2 Students are enthusiastic and positive
about their many informal attempts
3 One goal of co-creation is to find a
balance between the traditional
emphasis on value extraction
4 Linux, Wikipedia, YouTube and
Facebook are all examples of
mass collaboration.
5 It would be a mistake to think
of outsourcing as simply an
economic transaction;
6 In the prosumer society we can
deduce that all the consumers

18.3

a at peer collaboration as a way of coping
with a new learning environment.
b Specifically, thousands of programmers
contribute to Linux and over 75,000
people are writing and editing articles on
Wikipedia.
c will naturally become the producers of the
commodities which they want to produce.
d from consumers and the new stress on value
creation with consumers.
e is being transformed by allowing more
people to put their intellectual muscle to
the wheel.
f it is a universal tendency, like gravity, that
exerts a pull on everything.

Complete the sentences with expressions from C and D opposite.
that’s ten years out-of-date.
1 Film distributors are working with a business
2 CEOs might look to unrelated industries for companies with outstanding practices and processes.
For example, GE managers carried out
by studying FedEx, which has exceptional
customer service.
3 Some American executives fear that overseas companies seek help from their own governments in
stealing US
.
4 Netflix, the largest online film rental website, boasts an endless list of film titles, making millions
from the
.
5 The 64-page
with price list, offers products from 19 manufacturers, and
promises 72 hours’ delivery for most product lines.

Over to you
In what ways does your company or the place where you study try to improve efficiency?

Business Vocabulary in Use Intermediate

45

19
A

Buyers, sellers and the market
Customers and clients
People who buy IBM’s products and services are IBM’s
customers or clients.
Foster and Partners, a big architectural firm, has clients, rather than
customers. Client often refers to people and organizations who buy
the services of professionals such as accountants, lawyers, etc.

People who buy a company’s or a professional’s products or
services, especially expensive or exclusive ones, are its clientele.

A Foster and Partners’ project
Note

IBM’s customers considered as a group make up its customer
base. Foster and Partners’ clients considered as a group form a
client base. These are slightly technical expressions, used for
example in business journalism.

Clientele is rarely
used in the plural.

You can also talk about the users of a product or service who may not
be the organizations who actually buy it. The expression end-users refers especially to people
who use products, particularly computer equipment and other technology. These expressions
are often used in contrast to the producers and distributors (see Unit 24) of a product. For
example, IBM sells products through various channels, but the end-users are the employees of
the companies that buy its products.
People who buy products or services for their own use are consumers, especially when
considered as members of large groups of people buying things in advanced economies.

B

Buyers, sellers and vendors
A person or organization that buys something is a buyer or purchaser. But these terms
are also used to talk about someone in a company or shop responsible for buying goods
that it uses or sells. These people are also buying managers or purchasing managers.
An industrial buyer is an organization that buys things for use in producing its own goods
or services.
A person or organization that sells something is a seller. In some contexts, for example
selling property, they are referred to as the vendor. (Business journalists and lawyers may
also refer to people selling products, rather than services, as vendors.) People selling things
in the street are street vendors. A vending machine is a machine from which you can buy
coffee, cigarettes, etc.

C

The market
The market, the free market and market economy are used to talk about an economic
system where prices, jobs, wages, etc. depend on what people want to buy, how much they
are willing to pay, etc., rather than being controlled by a government. In this sense, market
is oft