From Satellites to Slack: A History of Collaboration in Business, 1970–2017

By Aubrey Collins | STC Student Member

Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. There may be as many articles on collaboration as there are scholars in the world, for over the last half of the twentieth century and the beginnings of the twenty-first, a number of professionals and academics have been interested in the process and value of this type of work. Within this large body of research, a definition is as elusive as the body of work is large. Broadly, it can be defined as working together toward a common goal.

If a room of people were asked for a definition of collaborative writing, each person would likely have a different answer. A group of council members writing a policy is quite different from two professionals co-authoring a paper, but are they not both considered collaborative acts? Due to this lack of standard and because of increasing importance in the lives of professionals, collaboration must be examined and defined in order to determine the benefits of and the best strategies to use. What better place to start than examining some of its recent history?

Over the past forty years, people in the business world have gotten further and further away from the idea of an isolated, single author toward the notion of several authors producing a final written product which offers greater power and productivity. Collaboration is now seen as a necessary tool, and with the proliferation of computers and the interconnectedness brought by the Internet, people themselves are more connected than ever before. Consider the term World Wide Web. People are connected to the Web, and thus in a way nebulously linked to each other. This ability to connect has certainly changed the way we communicate and, therefore, must also be examined when considering the evolution of collaboration.

1970s

As humans, technology is inextricably linked to our history, and during this time computers were still in their early stages. Although smaller than the building-sized computers of the 1950s, they were still large and expensive. Silicon chips that would reduce computers in size were still in the early stages of their development. Apple and Microsoft were just being born. Advanced typewriters were considered word processors. Professionals during this time were a long way from the electronic interconnectedness experienced today, although making strides toward it.

Interestingly, much of the focus presented by writers and researchers from the 1970s focuses on international endeavors. In a world that had seen much political turmoil in the previous half-century, people were looking forward to new ways of communicating and toward building strong alliances as well as internal businesses. That is not to say this type of international collaboration did not exist before the 1970s. On the contrary, the global in global market economy had been spreading its reach far before the dealings of the 1970s. In 1776, Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations, a theory of economic development that focuses on the integration of different markets over time. Collaboration between markets can even be traced further back to the beginnings of civilization where villages would develop specialties that would elicit trade with other villages’ specialties.

One trait that has stayed with these external types of collaboration in business as well as politics is a sense of competition. Businesses in the 1970s were reaching out but also trying to find a competitive advantage, as Hermann Bondi speaks to in his essay on discussing the European Space Research Organization working together to create satellites. Other literature of the time shows collaboration was decidedly concerned with international affairs and the dynamic types of relationships experienced between countries, especially their competitiveness.

In consideration of more internal affairs in the 1970s, Janis Irving presents a theory in his Victims of Groupthink, published in 1972. Groupthink essentially is a psychological phenomenon where a group will strive for consensus and suppress any dissent at all costs, even if that consensus is wrong or detrimental. This phenomenon is seen as disadvantageous to group processes. Furthermore, later studies of group collaboration emphasize that dissonance, argument even, is advantageous to the decision-making process. The idea is that when different ideas have the chance to campaign and compete, theoretically the best will emerge and will be a better solution than if one path had been presented alone as it occurs in Groupthink. Even from this brief early history, one can see that collaboration between humans has been going on for a long time, and if left undefined, it can be interpreted in many incomparable ways.

1980s

If the 1970s were a time of competition and international collaboration, the 1980s were a time of emerging computer technology which brought a shift in the way people communicate and collaborate, especially in the business setting. People began to have personal computers to work with, and in the later half of the decade, some companies began to study the effects of computer usage in meetings. Even Kenneth Bruffee’s “Conversation of Mankind” encourages teachers to integrate collaborative work in their classrooms.

During this decade, Intel built the first microprocessor, making smaller computers that could be more powerful. IBM produced a word processor that included a video display that allowed writers to view their work in progress. Personal computers also became available. The first cell phone networks were becoming available. Apple introduced the first computer with a graphical user interface that allowed us to look at screens, have color, and click on icons. Before graphical interfaces, people had to interact with a black screen by typing in commands. Douglas Engelbart—a pioneer in the development of computer-based technology and known for his life goal of determining how technology can improve people’s effectiveness in complex, urgent problems—created a software called Augment. Initially, this product was developed to give humans the capability “to deal with tough knowledge work and to process large volumes of information.” It ended up being a tool for facilitating collaboration among workers. One of the notable features of this software is televiewing, a process that allows different people to have access to the same screen through different terminals in different locations. This conference is typically paired with a telephone connection. Other tools include a shared files system that employs a “track changes” type of editing and an internal mailing system. The technology was much different than that of today and were still pretty costly, even for large businesses. Not only were they costly, but there was also a lack of standardization. A lot of computer and software systems of the 1980s were incompatible.

One intensive investigation is Geoffrey Cross’s time with a company he calls Auldouest Insurance Corporation while they are attempting to improve their writing as a company. Specifically, they were writing the executive letter that begins an annual report. This two-page letter took 77 days to complete. From his observations, field notes, interviews, and editing sessions, Cross gives a detailed description and analysis of this group’s development. He makes note of negative factors, such as hierarchical distribution of power, degree of positive emphasis, suppressing conflict, delegating, different perceptions of audience, and competing purposes, to name a few. His final thoughts are to further explain his title—the use of positive emphasis, a factor in business writing where corporations are pressured to use positive tones and superlatives to overstate their points. Such overstating can have very negative effects on a country, he supposes, because people begin to overestimate and thus be more willing to take monetary and potentially misguided risks. On a grander scale, Cross also discusses the poor quality of real businesses’ writings, the evolved understanding of composition as a social process, and specifically, M. M. Bakhtin’s theory of language to “illustrate the connection between the frequently volatile political context of writing, the written product, and by inference, the group-writing process” (9). This type of research gives a clearer picture of the problems and processes of the late 1980s.

This study and many others did not have computers as a considering factor. Writers were using computer technology, but it was not widely used in collaborative endeavors. However, some interesting research found that productivity was greatly increased by computers. These were only preliminary studies, and their use was on the verge of becoming popular.

1990s

These studies at the end of the 1980s continued on into the 1990s as business and researchers were becoming more interested in how computer technology could make collaboration more efficient. The world was becoming increasingly connected with the sharing of information. The World Wide Web was created and made free. Computer engineers were starting to build more sophisticated machines. A couple of smart computers could play chess or jeopardy. The world also began the use of wireless data transmission which greatly reduced the cost of Ethernet cables and the amount of service needed on such hardware. Technology was becoming even more sophisticated and at a much faster rate. In terms of collaboration, the 1990s were a sophisticated explosion which we can view in both the universities and in business.

The studies of academia often point to trends in the working world and offer a unique place to study group processes. Jolene Galegher and Robert E. Kraut wrote that students’ end products were not affected by computer-mediated communication, but it was more difficult for them to complete the tasks given. In another study, The University of Arizona partnered with IBM to create an Electronic Meeting System (EMS) which aspired to make group meetings more productive by using information technology. These meetings consist of a series of networked microcomputer workstations arranged in a U-shape. They found computer-mediated meetings to be extremely successful because efforts such as brainstorming were anonymous which encouraged more participation. The software also allowed for a large screen where everyone could see the same content at the same time.

The advancements did not escape application in the business world as the 1990s were a time of increased excitement about the possibilities of software and collaboration. Scott Jones conducted an ethnographic study on technical communicators reported frequency of collaborative writing activities that surveyed over 1,000 professionals in the Society for Technical Communication. Even within this select group, Jones notes the discrepant results from researchers approaching “collaborative writing from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives” that operate under “different definitions” or do not clarify the definition at all (283). He attempts to define collaboration by what he calls “a relatively common term” that describes “a wide variety of activities.” His categorizations are “contextual,” “hierarchal,” and “group.” Contextual collaboration is using a former template to create a document. Hierarchical collaboration, a definition taken from Ede and Lunsford, is extremely structured with specific goals carried out by people who have clearly defined roles. Hierarchical collaboration can either be author-centered or sequential, or the passing of a document from writer to writer. Group collaboration is true to its name—a group comes together to write a document. These groups can be joint (working together to create the document one word at a time), reactive (working on separate sections at one time while reacting to one another’s work in real-time), group single-authored (a group making decisions on a document typically written by one person), or horizontally divided (working independently on separate sections and bringing them back together at the end).

Jones offers the most detailed classification system for collaboration to date, but perhaps more importantly, this collection of mixed responses speaks to the increasing complexity and usefulness of software in collaborative activities. The success of the activity is directly related to the individual’s capacity to use the software. Writers also agree that quality of writing may be related to the amount of “substantive conflict” that occurs during the process of composition.

2000s

The end of the 1990s brought a new millennium and with that smart devices, social media such as Facebook that was launched in 2004, the cloud, and a need for constant security patches in software systems. Jones argues that writers’ jobs were significantly transformed by these changes which he calls “a transition to a digital concept of writing.” Document creation included paper, email, online documents, Intranet documents, and Internet documents. Paper was used very infrequently. New media theory, according to Hewitt, points to the evolving nature of writing and products, “the composing process is even more multidirectional and nonlinear than the ‘pre-digital’ era” (45).

Specifically, Judith Kessler studied the technical publications team at Sybase Incorporated. This team maintains many thousands of pages of online user documentation for different kinds of software from nine different locations around the world. Within this study, this team, for purposes of greater efficiency, increased reuse opportunities, improved user experience, and transfered all their sources based in a variety of formats into the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). The group set-up is a testament to the evolving nature of collaboration and how technology is integrated into those discussions.

With these new formats, new challenges also are presented. The many different mediums make it difficult for writers to be proficient in them all. One notable software is wiki, websites that allow collaborative editing. According to some studies, wikis meet or exceed the capabilities of several other communication platforms. They offer distinct opportunities for new organizational communication and collaboration. Particularly, they allow refactoring—users continuously editing content. Again, the collaborative writing process is becoming more fluid as writers’ work becomes more dependent on technology.

2010s

In the most recent decade, the collaboration of successful businesses can be examined. General Electric has open collaboration policies, and Hewlett-Packard has changed the way it collaborates as well by video conferencing rooms to their office. By examining the practices of large-scale corporations, perhaps means of success can be identified. These examples along with other research has shown that collaboration is practically becoming unavoidable.

In understanding this new history and successes, we must also consider the evolving tools presented to communicators thorough technology. As technology has become more sophisticated, the number of applications and tools has increased. The top tools mentioned in a study by Behles are SharePoint, Google Docs, and company Intranet. For students, the top tools are Google Docs, PBWorks, and Blackboard. Most recently, Abram Anders discusses team communication platforms (TCPs). The TCP researched by this study, Slack, is said from a survey of tech insiders to be one of the top three start-up companies that will change the world. TCPs are defined as “messaging services that support collaborative discussions organized into groups or topics” (226). More importantly, they offer integrations with other popular platforms in things like video conferencing and screen sharing. He found the top reasons for adopting this TCP were better support for virtual collaboration, organizational openness, the need for interoperability with specific external services, and the need to centralize internal communication.

The collaborative software of today is a long way from the televiewing of the 1970s. From these many studies, a shift into collaborative tendencies is visible. From the international focus of the 1970s, to a focus on in the eighties on studying the usefulness of computers, to the nineties where computers really started to infiltrate business meetings, to the 2000s where the number of applications has created an almost overwhelming plethora of choices, the focus and means of collaboration has changed. From face-to-face collaboration to growing technology-based communication, benefits found throughout these studies are similar—distribution of workload, saving time, and a convergence of perspectives. To have successful projects also consider the size for often smaller is better, consider having a leader, beware of the loafers, and know that conflict can be beneficial.

As we use this growing knowledge and these evolving technologies, not only should we consider these tips but also note the upcoming generation’s abilities to collaborate, their aptitude for social media, for their ability to communicate online, and for their ability to adapt to new and emerging tools. Millennials have grown up along with computers and possess a particular set of skills that could facilitate developments in the workforce. As noted earlier, the success of computer-mediated collaboration largely depends on the user’s ability with the software. Luckily, for many, computers are practically attached to their bodies, and there is no escaping them, especially with the convenience they provide when working with others. People’s skills have grown as technology has helped us to communicate across time and space. Now we can touch and move things in our screen as a direct interaction with our hardware—so much so that we may be becoming a part of it. Virtual technology is also becoming a popular software, and maybe it will be the next step for collaborative communication in the next decade.

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

Further Reading