There are different ways of looking at what business is. One of the more powerful ways perhaps is the transactional perspective: business is about mutually exchanging value.
This was once considered a simple transaction: the employee sold his or her time and effort in return for pay from the employer, the baker sold a loaf of bread at a given price.
The transaction has become more complex, confusing and promising. The employee still expects pay (which has become a complex reward system itself), but he or she also expects the job to be fulfilling, to offer opportunities for learning and for enhancing their social needs, to name only a few; at the same time the expectations of the employer have also become more complex. Even the apparently simple transaction of the baker and the client has become more complex, as the bread may or may not be from eco friendly crop and the client expects a wide choice (to have the option of choice is itself an extra aspect of the transaction).
At the same time, previously unforeseen transactions make themselves known. Companies now talk of their “contract with society” and members of society hold the company to certain expectations when they do not even have a strict business relationship with the company.
Transactions are also increasingly moments in relationships, not isolated deals.
It may well be that changes and transitions are based on transactions, whether this is intentional or not.

Profit

The essence of business is not, contrary to common belief it seems, profit, although profit has a lot to do with it. It is much rather the processes of value generating and value exchange which lies at the basis of profit.

It can be tempting to look at business as being about profit, but that does not help you explain how it works. However, it does throw light on the why of business. In that sense we have seen that profit has received in the past years a wider meaning. What I mean by this is that profit in the narrow financial sense is only part of the motivation behind business and may even be the cause of problems, as other concerns are then put in the background. Widening the notion of profit, including then also social and environmental concerns, becomes more obious when one takes one step back and looks into the reasons behind the pursuit of profit: why do we want financial gain? Is it for security, for meeting needs, for status, for being responsible to those who count on us? We may well realize that we have a whole range of desires and expectations, which can only be met once we see profit in a wider sense.