A company is a social organization aiming at producing goods or services. Companies are broadly speaking a body of men working together. Usually a company has several employees, id est several persons who entered in a legal contract with the company's owners.

Most of the companies are commercial ventures: a group of persons work together with a single objective in mind: carrying on their business in such a manner that the figures for annual profits will meet the executive branch expectations.

A company, whatever its scope of production, is first a social hierarchy: a company can be pictured as a pyramid where every level is a line of workers with similar jobs. Each line of workers from bottom to top is subordinated by the level just above. The last level is the highest “grade” you can achieved in a company: it is the executive branch, the boss, the guy who has no one above him to take orders from. This top level is in charge of setting the goals and the policy of the company that employees must conduct.

A company has a public image: it carries a name, and is often characterized by a logo. Its activity may be dedicated to the production of a good that will be used as a link in the chain of production of an other good. For instance, if you dismantle your computer, you'll realize that the many pieces you have in hands have a use only if they are “connected” or “assembled” together. Your computer is not the result of the business carried by a single company. Sometimes there are as many companies behind a good as the number of items this good is made of.