Collaborative writing: Challenges for research and teaching

Collaborative writing is integral to almost any organisation; indeed, Burnett (2001) suggests that as much as 75 per cent to 85 per cent of writing is collaborative in nature, and numerous studies emphasise the collaborative nature of writing in professional settings (e.g. Colen and Petelin 2004; Jones 2007). Considerable attention has been paid to this feature of workplace activity over the last 20 or 30 years: since the pioneering research in this area conducted by Faigley and Miller (1982), and Paradis, Dobrin and Miller (1985), there has been a range of studies aimed at describing and categorising different aspects of collaborative writing (e.g. Couture and Rymer 1989; Witte 1992; Lowry, Curtis and Lowry 2004); there is also a growing body of ethnographic research investigating collaborative writing in organisational settings (e.g. Cross 1994, 2001; Wegner 2004). We are perennially reminded of the continuing importance of collaborative writing as a topic for research (Forman 1991, 2004; Thompson 2001; Jones 2005, 2007), with the last of these contending that it is ‘worthy of additional research since it is crucial to the jobs of many writers’ (2007: 283).