Recognizing, understanding, and adjusting to changes in the

Question

Recognizing, understanding, and adjusting to  changes in the global marketplace has become an increasingly complex task for most product managers.

A) Recognizing, understanding, and adjusting to
B) To recognize, understand, to adjust to
C) The recognition, understanding, and adjustment to
D) Recognizing, as well as understanding and adjusting to
E) That one recognize, understand, and adjust to

SigEpUCI · Answer

Hmm good one.. Seemed so easy at first... I'm thrown of by the reference of what appear to be 3 tasks, as a single unit.

I was tempted to pick a because of its parallelism, but I'm going with C.

NEWKID · Answer

Had this been just a parallelism question, Paul wouldn't have posted it here. :roll:

I would have marked option A in the exam but there is some other answer to this. I'll watch this space for the answer.

venksune · Answer

To keep it simple I will go for A.

I am reading the sentence as below to see the intent..
Recognizing.....changes in the GlobalMarket Place..
Understanding....changes in the GM Place... and
Adjusting to the changes in the GM Place..

All the above when written together becomes a integrated complex task for the product manager.

Recognition (in C) changes intent - it would mean recognition for the company or the prod mgr or the product in the Global Marketplace. This is wrong. The 'task' is recognizing changes in Marketplace.

B would be ok, if it reads, recognize, understand  and  adjust to

C is awkward

D has some influence on me in some dimension - but A is better.

lastochka · Answer

I think it's A.
in C, you can't carry 'to' with the rest of the actions

damit · Answer

I would go with A

what has become a complex task for product managers?

Recognizing changes
understanding changes
and adjusting to changes

what is the OA?

SigEpUCI · Answer

Oh man... i'm looking at this a second time and beginning to think that D might be the answer....

It sounds horrible, but yes, i'm switching to D. Arg...

Paul · Answer

You guys are too suspicious of my questions

OA is A. Venksune and Iatoshka gave nice explanations

ywilfred · Answer

(A) for sure. Parallel structure is present in (A). (B) is wrong, because of the missing
'to' before understand. Same for (C). (D) has a redundant use of 'as well'.
(E) That one recognize is correct only when we end the sentence off by saying 'for one'

dj · Answer

agree with the crowd. A it is.

as we need to show manager's action, we need to use a verb.
recognizing - verb
understanding - verb
adjusting - verb

C has nouns...bad!

Praetorian · Answer

Paul

Long time since i have tried SC's, but i had a question on this one. 

Do you think the compound subject  Recognizing, understanding and adjusting   needs a plural verb.. have..

Since the verb is "has" , i think the subject needs to be singular

let me know what you think. oh, by the way, whats the source of these SC's?


Praetorian

srijay007 · Answer

Agree with Praet's criticism.
I prefered D over A just because of the "has"
In D ~ "as well as" makes it singular ....

Any explanations?

SigEpUCI · Answer

Thats also why I chose D... SC's like these really make me question myself.

Paul · Answer

Hi Praet, this is coming from Peterson's GMAT CAT which I find is pretty good. As for your question, I believe the enumeration is ok and could be called a compound gerund phrase.

Recognizing, understanding, and adjusting to changes in the global marketplace.

Had we had only 1 element, you would see that it is a gerund phrase: "adjusting to changes in the global marketplace  has "

"Recognizing, understanding, and adjusting to changes in the global marketplace" could be seen as a sequence of events, considered one group, leading to something. It could be replaced by noun X
X  has  become an increasingly complex task for most product managers

This definitely was a tricky one but I believe that A could be the answer for that reason

Praetorian · Answer

Paul

thanks for the reply. the question is definitely controversial. I think the rules are quite clear for subject verb agreement in case of compound subjects. recognizing, understanding and adjusting are definitely gerunds and act as nouns. its not about putting them in a group.. its about whether you have the conjunction "and" in a subject. 

For example

Paul, Praet and Anand has been working together 

if you read this sentence, it would be immediately obvious that even though Paul, Praet and anand can be considered as a group, "has" is not the correct verb. 

IMO, For SC, one should not venture too far beyond OG / Kaplan. it can get so confusing to read different stuff in different books. you wont find such controversial questions on the exam. 

Praetorian

Paul · Answer

I agree with you Praet that this question is too controversial. However, I still want to point out that your example is not totally similar to the explanation I gave. This is because your enumeration involves what I call distinct entities. The 3 names you mentioned cannot be part of the same process or sequence of events making a whole. I think I had a discussion about this with gmatblast or mba a while back. In the given question, the 3 gerunds could be part of the same "process" making a whole, if you see what I mean. Anyhow, this question is indeed controversial and for everyone who attempted it, do not let it ruin your confidence.

NM · Answer

Tough Choice between A and D. 
C is wrong since it should be the recognition of ....
B is wrong since it should be ....understand,  and to adjust.....
E is wrong due to its reference to  one  .

I will pick A.

ywilfred · Answer

(A) is parallel and keeps things simple
(B) To understand is required
(C) I ruled this out. If you read the recognition changes in the global market place is awkward compared to recognizing changes in the market place
(D) is a lenghty version of (A)
(E) use of 'one should go with 'one

(A) is my choice

Recognizing, understanding, and adjusting to changes in the

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