Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Rozilawati Razali and Mahamsiatus Kamaruddin
Relying on the technology solely cannot guarantee the implementation of EIS can be successful.
Studies on EIS should focus on the contributing elements that can influence the success of EIS
implementation (Ikart 2005). Those important success elements are known as Critical Success
Factors (CSF) (Caralli 2004). CSF for EIS in essence is a set of elements that must be fulfilled by the
activities involved in EIS implementation process (Salmeron & Herrero 2005). In other words, CSF is
a relatively small number of significant elements that must go right for the process to succeed. As EIS
supports business process, the fulfillment of CSF is necessary for not only the EIS implementation but
also the organisation as a whole.
Due to its importance, organisations from various domains including education continue to invest in
EIS projects as a way to strengthen and improve the efficiency of their management. The ability of
EIS to generate a variety of information and illustrates the performance of educational programmes to
education managers has been seen as an advantage that can help in addressing issues in education
management. The potential of EIS to support education management has not been fully explored.
Moreover, studies on CSF for EIS in education domain are almost non-existent. This indicates that
such studies must be established.
3. The study
The study described in this paper encompasses two phases: Phase 1 and Phase 2. Phase 1 involved
the identification of CSF through literature reviews. On the other hand, Phase 2 concerned the
identification and confirmation of CSF through a field work. The phases worked complementarily
where the former provided the theoretical background whereas the latter confirmed the phenomenon
from empirical perspective.
The study aimed to answer the following questions:
What are the necessary elements to ensure the success of EIS implementation for education
management?
How the elements identified in (i) can be categorised into several distinct critical success factors
(CSF) for EIS?
Based on the identified CSF in (ii), what would be the possible framework of EIS implementation
for education management?
Phase 1 was accomplished by reviewing previous studies concerning EIS implementation whereas
Phase 2 employed a field study as the means to gather viewpoints from industrial EIS experts. The
field study used semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions. The data gathered from both
phases were analysed by using content analysis. In essence, content analysis is the systematic
description of behaviour asking who, what, where, where and how questions within formulated orderly
rules to limit the effects of analyst bias (Fraenkel & Wallen 2008). It normally describes the contents of
interviews and related documents systematically (Krippendorff 2004). The approach was chosen as it
analyses data in an organised way, which is particularly necessary for answering “what” and “how”
questions. The important step in content analysis is the identification of categories that comprise a set
of related elements. The categories are then used as the bases for the proposed framework. Figure 1
illustrates the research design employed in this study.
The following paragraphs describe briefly the process involved and the methodology used in each
phase:
3.1 Phase 1: Reviews
The reviews were made on the published articles concerning the CSF for EIS implementation. The
searching was done through online sources for both conference and journal articles that were
published within fifteen years since 1996. The keywords used in the searching were “critical success
factors” and/or “executive information system” as well as “education management”. A number of
articles emerged but only five papers covered both CSF and EIS, which was the interest of the study:
(Abdullah 1997; Bajwa et al. 1998; Srivihok 1999; Poon & Wagner 2001; Salmeron & Herrero 2005).
These papers however discussed CSF for general EIS implementation, particularly for profit-based
businesses. None of the articles investigated CSF for EIS implementation in education management
context. This phase also involved the construction of questionnaire for the inteviews, which were
formulated based on CSF themes proposed by Kaniklides & Kimbles (1995) and Salmeron & Herrero
(2005).
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