Overview

Emerging Modes of Business is a chapter of the Maharashtra State Board (MSBSHSE) HSC Commerce syllabus for Organisation of Commerce and Management, studied at the Std XII level. Every earlier chapter in this subject — trade, business services, forms of business organisation — describes commerce as it has traditionally been carried on: a buyer and seller meeting (directly or through middlemen) at a physical place, using cash or a cheque, with paper records. This chapter studies how information technology has changed that picture, giving rise to new, technology-driven ways of doing business that exist alongside, and increasingly alongside or in place of, the traditional ones.

Two broad developments are covered. The first is e-business and e-commerce — buying, selling, and running a business electronically, over the internet, rather than only through a physical shop or office. The second is outsourcing, and within it the specific practices of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) — a firm handing over some of its own work to another, specialised firm (often in another country) rather than doing every activity in-house. Both developments share a common cause: cheaper, faster computing and communication technology has made it possible to sell to a customer, or hand off a task to a worker, without either party being in the same city — or even the same country.

Maharashtra's HSC Std XII Organisation of Commerce and Management syllabus for this topic draws on the same e-commerce, e-business, and outsourcing principles that are recognised in commerce education across India, even though the Maharashtra State Board's own Balbharati textbook develops and sequences them in its own way. We begin with e-business and e-commerce, then turn to outsourcing, BPO, and KPO.