Communications of the Association for Information Systems

In the past few years, design science has become a topic of increasing importance, especially in the North American academic IS community. Some observers see a new hegemony forming. Others dispute that but suggest that design science is merely the latest bandwagon rolling through the IS domain. A panel at the 2008 International Conference on Information Systems debated views of design science prevalent in the IS community. This paper reports on the panel discussion and attempts to position design science from various perspectives, including North American and European views, the latter with a long tradition of design-based IS scholarship.