Some business experts think that allowing employees to buy their emplo

Some business experts think that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price, no matter how high the stock rises, will give the employees a powerful incentive to work together, making a company more prosperous, which will thus increase the return to shareholders.


Here the main issue is use of "which " is unclear.
Only making company prosperous will not increase return to shareholders but employee incentive to work together to make company prosperous will


No issue here, perfect use of grammar and tenses.


This sentence is trying to make things parallel but what is "they" doing here ?
Employee themselves will not increase the return to shareholder, thus clear meaning issue here.


Pronoun error, "it" - there is no singular noun that "it" can refer to, hence wrong.


Meaning- sentence is trying to say "allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price will give the employees a powerful incentive for working together" and "allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price will make company more prosperous". How is it even possible ?
the second line doesn't make any sense but working together will definitely make company more prosperous.

OA: Some business experts think that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock will give the employees a powerful incentive to work together and will thus increase the return to shareholders.
Here, experts THINK that the subject in blue performs the two actions in green.
Conveyed meaning:
Experts think that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock will give the employees a powerful incentive.
Experts think that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock...will thus increase the return to stockholders.
Moreover -- because and serves to link the first green action to the second -- the usage of thus implies that the first green action causes the second green action.
This conveyed meaning -- that EMPLOYEES WORKING TOGETHER will lead to an increase in the return -- is logical.

D: Some business experts think that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock will give the employees a powerful incentive, and it will thus increase the return to shareholders.
Here -- because the portion in red is a separate independent clause -- experts think that the subject in blue performs only the FIRST ACTION IN GREEN, as follows:
Experts think that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock will give the employees a powerful incentive.
Since the independent clause in red is not connected to what experts THINK, the intended meaning is not conveyed.
Moreover -- because and serves to connect the first independent clause to the second -- we get:
Some business experts think, and it will thus increase the return to shareholders.
Here, the usage of thus implies that the action in blue causes the action in red.
This meaning is illogical:
What EXPERTS THINK does not cause an increase in the return to shareholders.
As noted above, the intended meaning is that EMPLOYEES WORKING TOGETHER will lead to an increase in the return.
Eliminate D.

Yes, "it" could refer to "allowing" (more specifically, to "allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price, no matter how high the stock rises"), but there are several other singular nouns in the sentence to which the "it" could refer. Does that make the pronoun absolutely wrong? No. As discussed in this video, pronoun ambiguity is not an absolute rule on the GMAT.

But, at best, the pronoun in D is a bit confusing. Even if we ignore the other singular nouns, the antecedent is long and messy. If we trade the pronoun in D for the proper antecedent, we get:

"Some business experts think that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price, no matter how high the stock rises, will give the employees a powerful incentive for working together to make a company more prosperous, and thus allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price, no matter how high the stock rises will increase the return to shareholders."

That's a lot for the reader to process. The parallel structure in (B) expresses that same meaning in a much clearer and easier-to-follow way. So even if the pronoun in (D) isn't technically wrong, we still have a vote for (B) over (D).

Also, an incentive is something that motivates the employees TO do something else (in this case, to work together), so "incentive TO work together" (B) is better than "incentive FOR working together" (D):

• The "for" in (D) makes it sound like employers are giving the employees an incentive for the purpose of working together (or, using the definition of "incentive", employers are giving the employees something that motivates them to do something for the purpose of working together).
• (B) makes it clear that the employees are given motivation to work together. (D) on the other hand makes it sound like the employees are given motivation to do some unknown thing -- and the purpose of that unknown thing is working together.
• In other words, (D) leaves us wondering whether employees are given incentive to work together or incentive to do some unknown thing -- (B) avoids that issue, so the intended meaning is more clear.
• That's admittedly a subtle, idiomatic distinction, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. But it gives us another small vote in favor of (B) over (D).

(D) isn't terrible, but since the scales were already tipped in favor of (B), we have our winner.

I hope that helps!

Some business experts think that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price, no matter how high the stock rises, will give the employees a powerful incentive to work together, making a company more prosperous, which will thus increase the return to shareholders.

A) to work together, making a company more prosperous, which will thus

B) to work together to make a company more prosperous and will thus

C) for working together, making a company more prosperous, and thus they

D) for working together to make a company more prosperous, and thus it will

E) for working together and making a company more prosperous, which will thus


If we compare first few words of answer choices,

we have a split between "to work" and "for working", 'to + verb' is used when we have to state 'an intention'.
In the sentence, an intention is stated. So, we need 'to + verb'... Eliminate C, D and E

In A, we have cause and effect construction......"allowing employees.................... will give the employees, making a company more......"
("noun + verb...., verbing" is a cause and effect construction)
here "making" is not the effect of "will give...", So,cause and effect relation is not established.............Eliminate A

Hence B is the correct answer

Hello Honorable Experts,
MartyTargetTestPrep, GMATGuruNY, ccooley, AjiteshArun, DmitryFarber, GMATNinja, generis, MentorTutoring
In this question, the correct choice is
It seems that the antecedent of THEIR (in the non-underlined part) has been used for 'employees'. So, if I replace the pronoun with noun we just get-->
Some business experts think that allowing employees to buy employees' employer's stock for a set price, no matter how high the stock rises, will give the employees a powerful incentive to work together to make a company more prosperous and will thus increase the return to shareholders.
My question:
Q1:
What's the rules to use 2 possessives at a time (side by side)?
Q2:
In A and C:
A) to work together, making a company more prosperous, which will thus
C) for working together, making a company more prosperous, and thus they
-->is it ok till the highlighted part?

Q3:
In C,
C) for working together, making a company more prosperous, and thus they
What's the problem with 'they'?
Q4:
In the non-underlined part, what's the antecedent of 'employer's'?
Also, in the non-underlined part, 'employer's' indicates 'singular' because the apostrophe has been used before 'S. So, why the employees buy just one 'employer's' stock? Does it guarantee that buying one employer's stock will give the employees a powerful incentives?

Q5:
What if we replace the bold part with THEM? Will it make sense?


Sorry for so many questions! These questions seem to be weird for so many people, but it is indeed needed.
Thanks all experts.

Hello Applicant4991,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your query, we believe we can resolve your doubts.

Your reasoning for eliminating Options A and E is flawed; "which" does not refer to "prosperous", as "prosperous" is an adjective; in the "comma + which" construction, "which" refers to the noun that precedes the comma or to the main noun of the noun phrase that precedes the comma, which in this case is "incentive".

The main error in Option A is that it places information that is vital to the meaning of the sentence - the fact that the purpose of the employees working together is to make the company more prosperous - between two commas; remember, information that is vital to the core meaning of the sentence cannot be placed between commas.

The main error in Option E is that it uses the present participle ("verb+ing" - "working" and "making" in this case) to refer to the purpose of the action "give the employees a powerful incentive"; remember, the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb") is preferred for referring to the purpose/intent of an action.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Hi,

I used the process of elimination to solve this question.

Step 1 : Eliminated Option A & E because they contain "Which" and "Which" is incorrectly modifying "Prosperous"
Step 2 : Eliminated Option C & D because they contain pronouns "They" and "It" and it is not clear what these pronouns are referring to and are also not required

Selected the only remaining option "B" as the answer choice.

Please let me know in case there is any flaw in the logic I have mentioned above.

Thank you !

Well, you could argue that it makes more sense in this context to write that there was an incentive to do something. When I see "incentive for," my expectation is that the entity receiving the incentive will follow. But I'm not entirely comfortable treating "incentive for" as a concrete error.

It's better to notice that there are a whole bunch of modifier/pronoun issues with "which," "they," and "it."

As for your second question, it depends on which sentence you're evaluating. In (C), for instance, "making" follows a full clause and a comma, which makes it sound as though it's modifying the entire previous clause. If that's the case, then I'd interpret phrase to mean that "making the company prosperous" was a consequence of giving the employees an incentive. But that's not quite right. The company doesn't magically become prosperous once the employees have an incentive.

Instead, it makes more sense to write that they're trying to give the employees an incentive to act -- in other words, to work together to make the company prosperous. This is the meaning we get in (B). Combine the more logical meaning in (B) with the fact that everything else has a problematic pronoun, and we've got a clear winner.

I hope that helps!

You're overthinking it!

First, (A), has the same problem we note in our earlier post about (C): "making" appears to modify the entire previous clause, creating an illogical meaning.

Better yet, what is the "which" in (A) modifying? "The company?" That doesn't quite work. "Allowing employees to buy their employer's stock" is what's increasing the return to shareholders, not the company itself.

Now we have two meaning errors in (A).

Can you argue that "the company" might be preferable to "a company" in (B)? It's debatable. I think either could work. But we don't have "the company" as an option, and I'd be very reluctant to treat a questionable "a" as a concrete error. If (A) has two glaring logical problems and (B) just has a debatable "a," (B) is the better option. Simple as that.

I hope that clears things up!

What is the sentence telling us?
That some experts think if employees are allowed to buy their employer’s stock for a set price (presumably lower than the current market price), the employees will get an incentive to work together to make the company prosperous (which will further increase its share price and hence their profit from the stock). This is turn will increase the profit to shareholders. So basically, if the employees have a stake in the company, they may get motivated to work hard to make the company successful and this in turn will increase the return to shareholders.

Let’s focus on the ‘that’ clause.
… allowing employees to buy their employer's stock … will give the employees a powerful incentive to work together, making a company more prosperous, which will thus increase the return to shareholders.
In short, the structure of the clause looks like this:
A will give employees B, which will thus increase C.

There are two intents here:
Incentive to do what? to work together …
Work together to do what? to make a company more prosperous
This will lead to an increase in the return to shareholders.

GMAT prefers infinitive to show intent. So first of all, (A) and (B) are preferable over others because of their use of ‘to work together.’
For the same reason, the use of ‘to make a company…’ is preferable.

The use of present participle with a comma at the end of the clause ‘making a company more prosperous’ often implies an effect of the verb before. It makes a little less sense here though only because we have a better option. Will just giving an incentive to work together make the company prosperous? May be not. In a company, whether employees get an incentive or not, they do need to work together. It might make more sense that they will work together toward the goal of making the company prosperous. Hence, in this regard, (B) and (D) are preferable.

(E) gives us two actions that the employees will have incentive for - ‘working together’ and ‘making a company more prosperous.’ As discussed above, it makes more sense to say that they will ‘work together to make the company prosperous.’

‘Which’ and ‘it’ usually refer to nouns, not clauses. Hence, we can now ignore (A), (D) and (E) since we have found other issues too in them.

In option (C), ‘they’ most likely refers to employees but do the employees increase return to shareholders? Debatable but let’s not eliminate based on this alone.
Note the structure of option (C):
A will give employees B, and thus they increase C.
When we are talking about what could happen in the future, we should give its impact in the future tense too.
A will give employees B, and thus they will increase C.
Now we know that we should eliminate option (C) too.

We are left with (B) which is preferable in each aspect discussed above.

Answer (B)

Hey Everyone,

Here's a detailed solution to this interesting question. Make sure you give this question an honest attempt before reading further.

Some business experts think that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price, no matter how high the stock rises, will give the employees a powerful incentive to work together, making a company more prosperous, which will thus increase the return to shareholders.

Sentence Structure:

• Some business experts think that
  
  • allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price,
  • no matter how high the stock rises,
  • will give the employees a powerful incentive to work together,
  • making a company more prosperous,
  • which will thus increase the return to shareholders.

Aspects of Meaning:

1. Some business experts believe that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set (fixed) price, no matter how high the stock rises, has benefits.
   
   1. It will give the employees a powerful incentive to make a company more prosperous by working together.
      
      1. Note that owning company stock gives an employee an incentive to primarily make the company more prosperous. Of course, this can be done by working together, but the ultimate objective would be to make the company more prosperous. Else, why own stock? Right?
   2. It will thus also increase the return to shareholders.

Error Analysis:

Choice A: Incorrect

• The deterministic error here is that the relative pronoun "which" has no clear antecedent. Logically, "which" should refer to "allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price". However, its current position seems to indicate that it refers to "incentive" (the nearest noun). But, that's illogical since "incentive" does not "increase the return to shareholders".
  
• The second, more subtle error is the use of the verb-ing modifier "making a company more prosperous". In its current form, it is hard to tell whether "making" tells us the result/consequence of "to work together", the manner in which they work together, or the intent behind working together. Hence, "making" can at best be deemed an ambiguous modifier. We need a modifier that completes the logic behind employee ownership of company stock.

Choice B: Correct

• The use of "and will thus increase" eliminates the deterministic error of "which" in choice A. Now, the subject of both verbs "will give" and "will increase" is "allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price". This is logical and correct.
• Changing "making" to "to make" suggests that the employees get an incentive to work together to make a company more prosperous". This is logical and actually captures the intended meaning.

Choice C: Incorrect

• "Incentive for working" is the incorrect idiom. "Incentive to work" is the correct idiom.
• "Making" is incorrect, as explained above.
• "and thus they" is incorrect. The use of "they" changes the subject of the second clause from "allowing employees...set price" to "employees". This cannot be allowed owing to the meaning of the word "thus"
  
  Quote:
  IMPORTANT: The word "thus" has two meanings, one of which is unknown to most.
  

  • Meaning 1: "therefore" or "hence". For example:
    
    • He is the eldest son and thus heir to the title.
    • We do not own the building. Thus, it would be impossible for us to make any major changes to it.
  • Meaning 2: "in doing so" or "in this way". For example:
    
    • She rarely gave interviews and thus avoided being asked questions she would rather not answer.
• Answer choice C and the original sentence employ Meaning 2 described above. In this sense, we can see that the subject of the verbs in both clauses must be the same: "allowing...". This is because the second action is a consequence of the preceding action of the same subject. Hence, it is incorrect to use the pronoun "they".

Choice D: Incorrect

• "Incentive for working" is the incorrect idiom. "Incentive to work" is the correct idiom.
• We do not need to use the pronoun "it" to repeat the subject "allowing...". Omitting "it" would make the sentence more crisp and rhetorical.

Choice E: Incorrect

• "Incentive for working" is the incorrect idiom. "Incentive to work" is the correct idiom.
• Joining "working" and "making" with "and" suggests that these two actions are independent. However, the author wishes to say that the intent behind working together is to make a company more prosperous.
• "Which" has no logical antecedent.

Hence, the best answer is B.

Happy Learning!

Abhishek

Hello IN2MBB2PE,


Hope you are doing well. Although your query is not for me, I will be glad to help you with this one.

The following is the sentence with the correct answer Choice B:


Some business experts think - This is the independent clause in the sentence. The blue entity is the subject, and the green entity is the verb.


that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price, no matter how high the stock rises, will give the employees a powerful incentive to work together to make a company more prosperous - This is the dependent clause. The SV pair is highlighted.


and will thus increase the return to shareholders. - Here, we see the second verb for the subject allowing employees.


So, the conjunction "and" just by itself connect two similar entities - nouns, verbs, modifiers, etc. The conjunctions "comma + and" has two functions in GMAT SC:

1. It connects two independent clauses.

2. It connects more than two parallel entities in a list.

You also raised a point that the subject "allowing employees" makes sense with the first verb but not with the second verb. However, that is not the case. The second verb is preceded by the word "thus". The usage of this word suggests that the second action is the outcome of the first action. So, the sentence says that because allowing employers to buy their employer's stock for a set price will give the employees the incentive to work together to make a company prosperous, the return to shareholders will also increase.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

I have a doubt for B. When we read the sentence
"some business experts think that allowing employees to buy their employer's stock for a set price, no matter how high the stock rises,
->will give the employees....
->will thus increase the return to shareholders.

first one makes sense, but second one doesn't make sense that just by allowing employees ...will increase the return to shareholders.

Only because of this reason i selected option e.

May you just shed some light on it , i am confused.

Regards,
Kumar Gaurav

Hi Gaurav, option B says:

.....will give the employees a powerful incentive to work together to make a company more prosperous and will thus increase the return to shareholders.

So, making a company more prosperous will increase the return to shareholders.

GMATNinja MartyTargetTestPrep GMATGuruNY @VeritasPrepHaile could you please clarify why D is incorrect? There is a lot of ongoing discussion about this. "Incentive for.." in (D) sounds funny, but want to pinpoint the exact reason to eliminate this option.

Can somebody please explain why D is wrong? Can't "it" refer to the "allowance". Allowing is used as a noun here. Please help!