1The Dynamics of Diffusion of Corporate GIS Tai On Chan

The hypothesis of this research is ‘Diffusion of GIS in an organisation is affected by the qualities of GIS as seen in the context of the structure of the organisation’. A review of the GIS diffusion literature establishes the theoretical background of the research. It is argued that the qualities of a corporate GIS reflect the GIS qualities mentioned in the hypothesis. These qualities are identified and applied to Rogers ’ model of organisational innovation process to give a model of diffusion of a corporate GIS, which serves as a working model for the hypothesis. The model describes how the qualities of a corporate GIS can affect GIS diffusion, and predict four sets of relationships as follows. • A corporate GIS is made up of modules of GIS which play the role of either a business process or an infrastructure, with an infrastructure GIS supporting the development of one or more business process GIS. • Diffusion of a corporate GIS takes place in the dispersed scenario. • Diffusion takes place when the purposes served by a module are focused and well defined