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I need help clarifying the answer to this question

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by peco » Sun Dec 12, 2010 1:38 am
I got this question off manhattan gmat and im confused with the answer given:


One study found that although government policy and the industrial sector in which a company operates can influence its productivity and financial strength, management decisions have at least as great an impact on a company's performance.

A) management decisions have at least as great an impact
B) decisions by management have a great impact
C) manager decisions impact greatly
D) decisions by a company's management impact greatly
E) what a company's management decides has a greater impact

The OA is A but i strongly feel the answer should be B

Please help with this. Thanks.
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by SmarpanGamt » Sun Dec 12, 2010 3:36 am
@peco. Original sentence has two phrase separated by comma. However , this is the only sentence gives a clear contradiction and its explaination.
Option B is passive.

Expert please comment
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by peco » Sun Dec 12, 2010 6:09 am
in my opinion, using brevity, i feel option B is more conscise and way process of elimination, option A was eliminated as the correct idiom should be "as ....... as". option A uses only "as ......." . Besides, in my opinion option B equally shows the comparison intended by the sentence.

Please i need serious clarification here.....what am i assuming wrongly.
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by jaymw » Sun Dec 12, 2010 7:24 am
B is a faulty construction. The sentence says: "although a and b...can influence x". The sentence should continue with something that clarifies the weighting between a and b and whatever else influences x. Option A does so by saying that the influence of management decision is equal to or bigger than the influence of a and b.

B just mentions a great influence, which makes the "although-construction" awkward and unnecessary. It practically takes away part of the intended meaning of the sentence.

The "missing one as" issue is not a big one here. It can easily be left out since it's obvious what is being compared. The sentence could have ended with "as do the two formerly mentioned factors", but that really would break the flow.
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by peco » Sun Dec 12, 2010 7:30 am
Thanks for that explanation. Id try to adopt that reasoning for subsequent challenges.
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by Jim@Grockit » Sun Dec 12, 2010 9:42 pm
jaymw wrote:B is a faulty construction. The sentence says: "although a and b...can influence x". The sentence should continue with something that clarifies the weighting between a and b and whatever else influences x. Option A does so by saying that the influence of management decision is equal to or bigger than the influence of a and b.

B just mentions a great influence, which makes the "although-construction" awkward and unnecessary. It practically takes away part of the intended meaning of the sentence.

The "missing one as" issue is not a big one here. It can easily be left out since it's obvious what is being compared. The sentence could have ended with "as do the two formerly mentioned factors", but that really would break the flow.
In a narrative context, where perhaps we may just have heard a source minimizing the role of management decisions, choice B would be ok, because the contrast would be stronger. Lacking that context, as you say, it puts the "although" in an awkward position.

Also, management decisions is less wordy than decisions of management, though English is not as tolerant as other languages are of modifying nouns with other nouns.
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