The Problem with Group Papers

Wharton students universally hate the group paper. A 20-page paper gets chopped up into little sections for the group members to write, and then it gets put back together like a Mr. Potatohead with all the appendages in the wrong place. On its first draft, the paper is rarely coherent with four or five different writing styles in the paper, and the main thesis is often lost.

I think a large part of the problem with group papers is the idea of equity that arises from a group of peers. Each person is expected to contribute equally - no more, no less. Groups, however, don't do well at writing a coherent paper, and so the vast majority of work lands on an individual.

This burden often falls in the form of being the integrator, where the group member has to take everyone's written sections and try to put them together. This job is remarkably tedious. The first run-through is dedicated to making sure the writing style is consistent. Then the integrator has to make sure all the points support the thesis is a logical and coherent flow. Often times, there are parts that need to be cut or rewritten, but the integrator really doesn't want to offend anyone by slashing or rewriting their part. Rewriting also takes a lot of time that the integrator might not have or want to dedicate to the project. As a result, the integrator might end up with a product that is coherent, but not the best quality.

But what happens to a group where the diffusion of responsibility takes hold. No one wants to step up to be the integrator? Sometimes groups I have worked on will do group proofreading where each part is passed to someone else in the group who proofreads it. This group proofreading also doesn't address the problem of the main thesis or the problem of not wanting to rewrite other people's parts. It does however make it so that there is no one group integrator.

The only thing I've seen that really works efficiently is having one writer. To make this work, the group needs to do away with the idea of equity: everyone does not need to contribute equally. The group brainstorms together, makes an outline together, and does research together, but it is the single writer who puts it all together into a coherent story. Although it would seem as though this task would take more time, I have actually found that it takes less time to write a paper once well than have to integrate and rewrite.

I am curious about what other people's experiences have been with group papers and how group papers get written in the business world