ABSTRACT
Collaboration plays a substantial role in the activities of workplace communication, a fact recognized by workplace writers as well as researchers and theorists of nonacademic writing (Couture & Rymer, 1989; Faigley & Miller, 1982; Lunsford & Ede, 1990; Paradis, Dobrin, & Miller, 1985). Recently, for example, it has become evident that communication specialists often collaborate in order to verify technical information (Grice, 1991), to strengthen the quality of documentation through peer and hierarchical editing (Shirk, 1991), and to ensure both the soundness and utility of usability test design for documentation processes and products (Simpson, 1991). It is also apparent that collaboration oftentimes occurs in more subtle ways: as a series of exchanges between writers and readers (Blakeslee, 1993), or as influence exerted from groups and subgroups with which writers regularly identify (Allen, 1993). Moreover, work in composition and rhetoric indicates that writing itself is largely a social act (Bruffee, 1986; Cooper & Holzman, 1989; LeFevre, 1987), and that collaboration is therefore inherent in the day-to-day work of technical communication specialists in workplace settings (Dobrin, 1989; Odell, 1985; Selzer, 1989).
