Short-stay visas come in a handful of flavours, and choosing is mostly about matching your true purpose. A tourist visa covers holidays, visiting friends and relatives, and sightseeing. A business visitor visa covers meetings, conferences, and site visits, but almost never actual employment; the distinction matters, because attending a meeting is fine while working for a local entity is not. Transit visas cover passing through en route elsewhere, sometimes required even for airport connections depending on nationality. Many countries also offer medical, short study, and event-specific visas.
The golden rule: apply for the visa matching what you will really do, since entering on a tourist visa and doing something else can void your status and haunt future applications. If your trip mixes purposes, the business visa usually covers incidental tourism, while the reverse is often not true.
Check the destination's official immigration site for its exact categories, and when your case is genuinely ambiguous, ask the embassy directly and keep the answer in writing.