INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

UNIVERSITY OF BALOCHISTAN

TOPIC: DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY,

ABSTRACT AND SYNOPSIS

WHAT IS LITERATURE REVIEW

SUBMITTED TO: SIR SHEHZAD

BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

SUBMITTED BY: KHALID KHAN

M 10

MBA 1ST SEMESTER

DATE: 19 SEPTEMBER, 2008

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY,

ABSTRACT AND SYONPSIS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

An executive summary is a report, proposal, or portfolio, etc in miniature. That is, the

executive summary contains enough information for the readers to become acquainted

with the full document without reading it. Usually, it contains a statement of the

problem, some background information, a description of any alternatives, and the

major conclusions. Someone reading an executive summary should get a good idea of

main points of the document without becoming bogged down with details.

 An executive summary differs from an abstract in that an abstract is usually only

about six to eight lines long. Its purpose is to inform the reader of the points to be

covered in the report without any attempt to tell what is said about them. Covering no

more than a page in length, the executive summary is longer and is a highly

condensed version of the most important information the full document contains. Both

the executive summary and the abstract are independent elements rather than a part of

the body of the document. Both are placed at the beginning of the document.

 With the possible exception of the conclusion and recommendation, the executive

summary is the most important part of a report. As such, it should be the best-written

and most polished piece of the document. This is because many readers may only

look at the executive summary when deciding whether or not to read the entire

document. In some companies, the executive summaries are distributed so that

employees are informed as to what information is available, and interested readers

may request the entire document. In short, you may expect that an executive summary

will be read more frequently and by more people than will your entire document.

 Since the executive summary is a condensation, when creating it, you omit any

preliminaries, details, and illustrative examples. You do include the main ideas, the

facts, and the necessary background to understand the problem, the alternatives, and

the major conclusions. Brevity and conciseness are the keys to a well-written

summary. Do not take a few sentences from key sections of the document and string

them together. Rather, go over the entire document and make notes of the elements

you consider important. From your notes, create a rough draft of the summary. Then,

polish what you have written until it is smooth and seamless without unnecessary

wordiness. Do not include any introductory or transitional material. Finally, ensure

that your executive summary is accurate and representative of your full document. It

should not be misleading, but it should give readers the same impression as if they

had read the entire report.

ABSTRACT

An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference

proceeding or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject or discipline, and is often

used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpose. When used, an abstract

always appears at the beginning of a manuscript, acting as the point-of-entry for any

given scientific paper or patent application. Abstraction and indexing services are

available for a number of academic disciplines, aimed at compiling a body of

literature for that particular subject.An abstract is a self-contained, short, and powerful

statement that describes a larger work. Components vary according to discipline; an

abstract of a social science or scientific work may contain the scope, purpose, results,

and contents of the work. An abstract of a humanities work may contain the thesis,

background, and conclusion of the larger work. An abstract is not a review, nor does it

evaluate the work being abstracted. While it contains key words found in the larger

work, the abstract is an original document rather than an excerpted passage.

SYNOPSIS

A synopsis is a brief overview of a report’s most important points, designed to give

readers a quick preview of the contents. It’s often included in long informational

reports dealing with technical, professional or academic subjects and can also be

called an abstract. Because it’s a concise representation of the whole report, it may be

distributed separately to a wide audience; interested readers can then order a copy of

the entire report.

ABSTRACT VS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, DIFFERENCES

These are the differences between Abstract and Executive Summary:

  ABSTRACT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

NATURE Abbreviated summary. Unique selling point (USP).

AUDIENC

E

Specialized (researchers) or mere readers.

Decision makers, e.g. corporate managers.

SCOPE Informational, academic, administrative, and other general documents (thesis, articles, and patents).

Solicited or unsolicited sales proposals and bids (P&B).

PURPOSE Give information.Ascertain the purpose of the whole document; give an overview or preview of its content.

Call for action.Persuade readers to buy on the recommended solution addressing the problem, namely, make your unique selling point (USP).

CONTENT Mainly technical:

1. Present the problem and scope;

2. Expose the used methodology;

3. Report observations and results;

4. Draw conclusions and recommendations.

Mainly managerial (The 4 rules of persuasion):

1. State outcomes and benefits;

2. Substantiate benefits with proofs of concept;

3. Apply benefits to the reader's particular; context (win themes);

4. Recommend a solution to address the problem.

LENGTH Short.Shorter than the executive summary.

Short.Longer than the abstract.

STYLE Technical, static, and more academic.

Managerial, dynamic, and more enthusiastic.

As revealed by the side-by-side comparison above, the key difference between an

abstract and an executive summary resides on their antipodal purpose, and

consequently on the format used to achieve this goal.

Indeed, while the abstract aims at convincing the reader to go through the whole

document in order to quash his thirst of information, the executive summary, at the

opposite, aims at persuading the reader, who is supposed to be a decision maker, to

take of forgo an action, whether usually buying a product, or approving another

action.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY VS SYNOPSIS

An executive summary is a fully developed mini version of the report itself, intended

for readers who lack the time or motivation to study the complete text while a

synopsis is a prose table of contents that outlines the main points of the report. So an

executive summary is more comprehensive than a synopsis, often as much as 10

percent as long as the report itself. Unlike synopsis executive summary may contain

headings, well-developed transitions, and even visual aids. It is often organized in the

same way as the report, using a direct or an indirect approach.

WHAT IS LITERATURE REVIEW

A literature review is a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current

knowledge on a particular topic.

Most often associated with science-oriented literature, such as a thesis, the literature

review usually precedes a research proposal, methodology and results section. Its

ultimate goal is to bring the reader up to date with current literature on a topic and

forms the basis for another goal, such as the justification for future research in the

area.

A good literature review is characterized by: a logical flow of ideas; current and

relevant references with consistent, appropriate referencing style; proper use of

terminology; and an unbiased and comprehensive view of the previous research on the

topic. It helps with all types of assignments as well.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an

organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a

recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization,

or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material

or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression

of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature

review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or

relevant.

According to Cooper (1988) "A literature review uses as its database reports of

primary or original scholarship, and does not report new primary scholarship itself.

The primary reports used in the literature may be verbal, but in the vast majority of

cases reports are written documents. The types of scholarship may be empirical,

theoretical, critical/analytic, or methodological in nature. Second a literature review

seeks to describe, summarize, evaluate, clarify and/or integrate the content of primary

reports".

Undertaking a review of a body of literature is often seen as something obvious and

a task easily done. In practice, although research students do produce what are called

reviews of the literature, the quality of these varies considerably. Many reviews, in

fact, are only thinly disguised annotated bibliographies. Quality means appropriate

breadth and depth, rigor and consistency, clarity and brevity, and effective analysis

and synthesis; in other words, the use of the ideas in the literature to justify the

particular approach to the topic, the selection of methods and demonstration that this

research contributes something new.

The originality of a research topic often depends on critical reading of a wide-

ranging literature. The nature of these concerns, on one hand, immersing oneself in

the topic to avoid the shallowness of quick and “dirty” research and, on the other,

there is the need to identify the key ideas and methodologies from which some

contribution to knowledge might be made. Without a systematic search and critical

reading of the literature it would be very difficult to see how academic research

could make a new application of a methodology or contribute in some way, no

matter how small, to knowledge. In other words, knowledge generation and

understanding is an emergent process and not a universal product. In order to know

the nature and character of the implications of a development you need to know the

intellectual context of that development.