Although the nineties have been dubbed the decade of computer supported collaboration, businesses are hesitant to adopt technologies just because they are in vogue (Grove, 1991). Not only do today's businesses expect the computer to increase productivity, they want it to improve the quality of their products and services as well. As today's businesses are cutting layers of middle management and molding their companies into flatter organizations, we are seeing more work assigned to groups of people. No matter what the task, most of these groups generate some kind of a written document describing their progress, their solutions, and their proposals. Writing a multiauthored document is an intricate, iterative progression which requires the group to be well coordinated. The process often frustrates members as they have to complete their own tasks, coordinate their writing efforts with others, analyze multiple audiences, and participate in revision and editing sessions (Weiser, 1987). Recently, computer-supported tools for this kind of collaborative writing have been developed. Electronic Meetings System (EMS) technology mediates and alters the interactive processes of group role dynamics, communication structure and facilitation, group access to resources, and egalitarian status for member participation (Dennis, George, Jessup, Nunamaker, & Vogel, 1988; Zigurs, Poole, & DeSanctis, 1988). EMS technology may be defined as systems, with multiple tools, which support multiple tasks in specially designed computerized environments. Previous research has shown EMS technology most effective when the tool used is appropriate for the task (Easton, George, Nunamaker, & Pendergast, 1990). The specific EMS tool used in this study, Groupwriter (part of the GroupSystems Software by Ventana Corporation), is designed to support group writing. Groupwriter is one of a class of tools developed to support group writing and was developed for the DOS platform. Aspects, another group writing tool, was developed for the Macintosh platform. This study evaluated the impact of the Groupwriter tool on the quality of group written documents. BACKGROUND This research study integrates material from both group writing and processes, and material from Electronic Meeting System research. Group writing refers to multiauthored document writing. The group works together on writing tasks in activities including invention, audience analysis, organization, drafting, revising and editing (Forman, 1991). This should be distinguished from collaborative writing which uses multiple contributions in reviewing and editing a text which is then incorporated into the document by a single author (Forman, 1991). Group Writing and Processes The evaluation of group inputs such as group process intervention through planning, and group outputs such as document quality and length have been examined in many prior research studies flower and Hayes (1980) have identified planning as a subprocess of writing which occurs throughout the task. Planning is important because it improves the writer's ability to target the readership of the document, and it is considered the optimal strategy to manage the constraints of writing (flower & Hayes, 1980; Haas, 1989). Additionally, the quality of planning has been directly related to the output document quality (Carey, flower, Hayes, Schriver, & Haas, 1989). Carey et al. (1989) found that planning a document, before beginning to write, benefits novice writers in particular because they tend to lapse cognitive prompting to plan. Document length is another important output as it has also been found to be directly correlated to document quality (Hackman & Kaplan, 1974). The study of group process in a specific technological environment, such as an Electronic Meeting System, must examine the convergence of tools which facilitate collaboration, coordination, and communication among group members. …