In the traditional business system the rights of property and the rights of association are well-known. But it is argued in this paper that it is possible to discern other, general rights of organizations which, though rarely made explicit, are often at the heart of current debates about the future of the business enterprise. It is suggested for example, that businesses have ‘rights’ to existence, access to input and output markets, fair competition and termination, and it is clear that societal attitudes to these ‘rights’ are changing. The authors present a taxonomy of business rights and discuss their strategic implications in the cases of private-profit, non-profit and nationalised enterprises.
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