The different identities of GIS and GIS diffusion

Abstract

GIS managers traditionally consider three perspectives of the nature of GIS when introducing GIS into an organization. When the GIS is developed to address focused and well de® ned problems of the organization, these perspectives adequately describe the changing identities of GIS in the study of its di usion. However when the GIS is developed to address strategic, but vaguely de® ned problems, as typically is the case of a corporate GIS, these perspectives are inadequate for describing it. Therefore a new perspective is developed for the corporate GIS and the signi® cance of the new perspective on GIS di usion research is discussed.

Reflection and comment: Health GIS in the mid‐west: Unexpected developments and directions

“…A substantial literature has developed over the last decade on factors affecting GIS diffusion and adoption (Chan and Williamson, 1999;1999b;Nedovic-Budic;1998 Budic and Godshalk, 1994). It is beyond the scope of this particular piece to address this issue in-depth.…”

The application of GIS in the lands sector of a developing country: Challenges facing land administrators in Ghana

“…The literature abounds with many definitions of GIS (Department of Environment 1987, Cowen 1988, Grimshaw 1989, Carter 1989, Maguire 1991, Martin 1996, Hendriks 1998, Chan and Williamson 1999, ESRI (http://www.esri. com/library/gis/abtgis/what_gis.html)).…”

Long term management of a corporate GIS

“…In their discussion on the identities of a GIS, Chan and Williamson (1999 ) develop a productional perspective that views a corporate GIS as an integral part of the production process of an organisation. In such a corporate GIS, certain collections of GIS capabilities (GIS modules) have the function of directly generating the products and/or services required of the organisation.…”

“…Based on the productional perspective of GIS, Chan and Williamson (1999 ) developed a model to describe di usion of a corporate GIS. They also tested their model by examining the development of DNRE's GIS over an 18-year period from 1979-1997.…”

“…The chronological development of DNRE's corporate GIS is modelled by the productional perspective of a corporate GIS (see §2 below) (Chan and Williamson 1999 ) according to a set of pre-de ned rules. From the resulting model, ve patterns of development are identi ed.…”