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Business can be a for-profit, not-for-profit or hybrid organization. But all these businesses focus on the satisfaction of their stakeholders. Although many businesses adopt a limited perspective of their stakeholders, focusing primarily on the interests of their investors, customers and, in some cases, their employees, it is a fact that the long-term sustainability of any business will depend on its contributions to the society. The long-term objective of all businesses is to serve and support the society and contribute to the socioeconomic development of their people. Therefore, this chapter presents a comprehensive review of the relationship between business and society, with special reference to the three main types of businesses: commercial businesses, social enterprises and non-governmental organizations. As in the case of biological systems, the relationship between business and society may be characterized predominantly by one of the three types of symbiotic relationships: mutualism, commensalism and parasitism. However, the successful co-existence of business and society, in the long run, would depend on the degree of mutualism in their relationship.

Twenty-one wild strains of P. parasitica, ten from diseased tomato plants and 11 from diseased sweet pepper plants, have been all inoculated on tomato and sweet pepper simultaneously to study host specificity. Two inoculation methods were used: a) irrigation with a malt-extract agar fungal suspension (MEA) planting pots with sterile vermiculite-substrate, b) cutting the shoot of the plants and putting a 1cm-diameter disc of MEA containing mycelium and sporangia. From the 10 P. parasitica strains originally isolated from diseased tomato plants, only 1 was pathogenic on sweet pepper, but all of them affected tomato when irrigated with the fungi. When these isolates where cut-shoot inoculated only the same unique isolate showed stem rot on sweet pepper, but 10 did it on tomato. About the P. parasitica isolates obtained from sweet peppers, only four were pathogenic on sweet pepper and none on tomato when inoculated by drenching, showing low pathogenicity on the stems. These results highlight the host specificity of P. parasitica when comes from root and crown rot diseased plants.