Nice explanations Piyush and Fame; I am updating the post with the OA and my OE.
Vercules wrote:
The most prominent characteristic of High-performance marketing firms is that they have a tendency to have concentrated greater executives in the direction of a smaller, more careful selection of a number of important businesses than is the case with other marketing firms.
A) that they have a tendency to have concentrated greater executives in the direction of a smaller, more careful selection of a number of important businesses than is the case with
The comparison is correct in the original sentence but it is unnecessarily wordy because in its use of
“they have a tendency”
"in the direction of"
and the present perfect “have concentrated” is inappropriate to express a regular feature of marketing firms; simple present will be better, moreover "greater" is used incorrectly.B) that they tend to concentrate more executives to a smaller, more careful selection of a number of important businesses than toward
This choice is clear and concise. However, in its use of “toward other marketing firms,” this choice does not draw the correct and logical comparison between the behavior of top marketing firms and the behavior of other marketing firms. Instead, this choice illogically compares the level of resources concentrated on certain important customers and the resources directed toward other marketing firms. Finally, the construction “concentrate more resources to” is unidiomatic; the appropriate idiom is “to concentrate on.”C) that they have a tendency to concentrate more executives on a smaller, more careful selection of a number of important businesses as opposed to
This choice incorrectly draws a comparison between the level of resources concentrated on a number of important customers and the resources directed towards other marketing firms in its use of “as opposed to other marketing firms.” The correct comparison is between the behavior of top marketing firms and that of other marketing firms.D) that they tend to concentrate more executives on a smaller, more carefully selected number of important businesses than do
-- correctThis choice correctly draws a comparison between a characteristic of top marketing firms and that of other marketing firms, and is clear and concise.
E) the tendency to concentrate a greater number of executives on a careful and small selection of a number of important businesses as opposed to
This choice incorrectly draws a comparison between the level of resources directed toward a number of important customers and the resources directed toward other marketing firms in its use of “as opposed to.” The correct comparison is between top marketing firms and other marketing firms.