By applying optimization techniques commonly used to plan operations, it is possible to determine how much effort ought to be devoted to each of a company’s products in order to meet its goals in both the short and long terms.
a. it is possible to determine how much effort ought to be devoted to each of a company’s products in order to meet its goals in both the short and long terms

b. a company’s managers can determine how much effort should be dedicated to each of the company’s products in order to meet its short and long term goals

c. it can be determined by company managers how much effort ought to be devoted to each of the company’s products in order to meet its goals, both short and long term

d. it may be possible for company managers to determine how much effort should be dedicated to each of these products in order to meet the company’s short and long term goals

e. managers at a company can determine how much effort ought to be dedicated to each of these products in order to meet the company’s goals in both the short and long term
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+1 for B..these is the culprit in e

I will go for B as well. the antecedent of its is company's. Its is a possessive adj so it can refer back to another possessive adj.
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"By applying optimization techniques commonly used to plan operations" should modify "managers" who can apply the techniques, that eliminates A,C,D .

between B and E . E can be eliminated because of "these" which has no antecedent and lack of parallelism "both the short and long term".
So , B is the answer.

The essence of a dangling modifier is the absence of the modified noun and we are required to bring it into the sentence, although it may not be there in the original. For example:

After frying in the pan, the entire lot of fish was eaten.

Who ate the fish? This is tricky and GOK; so this is a defective sentence. Now let’s make it more sensible by introducing a new factor namely the doer of the action or the modified noun of the participial modifier after frying in the pan.

After frying in the pan, the cook ate the entire lot of fish.

Now this sentence is better. Thus in dangling modifier cases, the introduction of the doer turns the sentence meaningful and straight. This is how the term manager has crept in royally and grammatically in the correct choice in the given text
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Daagh and Shraddha(egmat) thank you for your explanations.
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If I did make a valid point, would you please consider giving me a kudo. Thanks.

It's between B and E.

But what does 'its' refer to - company's managers or company's products - both are plural. I dont see "company" out there in option B.

E has "these".


By applying optimization techniques commonly used to plan operations, it is possible to determine how much effort ought to be devoted to each of a company’s products in order to meet its goals in both the short and long terms.

b. a company’s managers can determine how much effort should be dedicated to each of the company’s products in order to meet its short and long term goals
e. managers at a company can determine how much effort ought to be dedicated to each of these products in order to meet the company’s goals in both the short and long term
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Thanks
Sumeet
www.midasreturns.wordpress.com

Hi there,

This is the sentence with Choice E:

By applying optimization techniques commonly used to plan operations, managers at a company can determine how much effort ought to be dedicated to each of these products in order to meet the company’s goals in both the short and long term.

In this sentence, along with the parallelism issue that you have mentioned, “each of these products” has no reference. What are these “each of these products”? Does the sentence contain a list of products to which this phrase can be referred? No. This reference error makes choice E incorrect.

Now let’s analyze the sentence with choice B:

By applying optimization techniques commonly used to plan operations, a company’s managers can determine how much effort should be dedicated to each of the company’s products in order to meet its short and long term goals.

Pronoun “its” is a possessive noun. This means it must refer to a possessive noun. There is only one possessive noun in the sentence – “company’s”. So without any ambiguity, possessive “its” is referring to “company’s”. If we replace “its” with “company’s” we get the logical intended meaning of the sentence:

By applying optimization techniques commonly used to plan operations, a company’s managers can determine how much effort should be dedicated to each of the company’s products in order to meet company’s short and long term goals.
Hence, this choice is error free.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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