Hello Everyone!
Let's tackle this question, one thing at a time, and narrow down our choices to the correct answer! To begin, let's do a quick scan over the options and highlight any major differences in orange:
When working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues for the global manager.
(A) When working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues for the global manager.
(B) When they work with overseas clients, understanding cultural norms is at least of equal importance to the global manager as grasping the pivotal business issues.
(C) For global managers working with overseas clients, understanding cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues.
(D) For global managers working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important to them as that they grasp the pivotal business issues.
(E) Global managers working with overseas clients find an understanding of cultural norms to be equally important as grasping the pivotal business issues.
Whenever we see the entire sentence underlined, it's a good idea to focus on large issues first. In this case, we do have a few large grammar issues we can focus on:
1. Modifiers (how options A-D begin)
2. Idioms & Meaning (at least as important as / at least of equal importance to / to be equally important)
3. Parallelism (when talking about cultural norms & pivotal business issues)
One of the most common grammar issues for GMAT SC questions with the entire sentence underlined is MODIFIERS. Let's take a quick look at the original sentence for clues as to what the modifier is and what it's referring to:
When working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues for the global manager.
We can clearly see the modifier is "When working with overseas clients." Now we need to figure out who/what that's modifying. We must then ask the question, "WHO is working with overseas clients?" The global manager!
In English, modifiers and their antecedents (the person/thing they're referring to) need to be located next to each other. Let's eliminate any options that separate the modifier from the antecedent, and keep those that put them directly next to each other:
(A) When working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues for the global manager.
(B) When they work with overseas clients, understanding cultural norms is at least of equal importance to the global manager as grasping the pivotal business issues.
(C) For global managers working with overseas clients, understanding cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues.
(D) For global managers working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important to them as that they grasp the pivotal business issues.
(E) Global managers working with overseas clients find an understanding of cultural norms to be equally important as grasping the pivotal business issues.
We can eliminate options A & B because the modifier isn't directly before or after what it's referring to.
Now that we have it narrowed down to 3 options, let's move on to another item on our list. PARALLELISM is another common problem we run across in these types of sentences, so let's focus on that for now. We need to make sure the 2 items global managers find important are worded using parallel structure and wording:
(C) For global managers working with overseas clients, understanding cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues.
(D) For global managers working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important to them as that they grasp the pivotal business issues.
(E) Global managers working with overseas clients find an understanding of cultural norms to be equally important as grasping the pivotal business issues.
There you have it - the correct option is C! It's the only one that uses modifiers correctly and uses parallel structure throughout! By focusing on the clear differences between the options, we can narrow down our choices to find the correct one quickly!
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