Transforming Work Through Information Technology: A Comparative Case Study of Geographic Information Systems in County Government

Abstract

A comparative case study was designed to assess the consequences of implementing a particular geographic information system (GIS) in two neighboring county government organizations. Respondents reported radically different experiences with, and consequences of, the GIS technology. In North County, participants considered GIS to be responsible for transforming the way that work was accomplished and for changing patterns of communication among departments. In South County, the same GIS technology was implemented with little social consequence. These divergent outcomes are associated with differences in four specific processes related to the implementation of the GIS in the two organizations: initiation, transition, deployment, and spread of knowledge. In North County, implementation was initiated by an influential group of users (geographers) who positioned the technology as a shared resource that built upon existing competencies. A distributed configuration was deployed in North County, and conceptual knowledge about GIS was disseminated widely. By contrast, in South County GIS was initiated by a centralized data processing department as one of many revenue-producing services. Transition to GIS in South County required a departure from existing competencies, and it was deployed as a centralized system with limited procedural knowledge spread among the potential user community. Taken together, these findings suggest that implementation processes that advance users’ learning about potentially transformational technologies are likely to result in perceived transformation. The theoretical perspective of organizational learning is, therefore, suggested as a guide for future research on the role of information technology in organizational transformation.