ooooohhh ok

no, that's an incorrect analysis. in this case, "being" isn't a modifier; it's a gerund (= NOUN type -ing form).
in fact, "being committed" is the subject of this sentence!

i.e., here "being heavily committed"
is like
Swimming is fun.
that's a complete sentence -- "swimming" is a noun (gerund). since it's a noun, it's not modifying anything.

in fact, i don't think you're EVER going to see "being X" as a modifier, because, in any such case, you could simply eliminate "being" to produce a more concise sentence.
i.e.,
Being tired from the party, I fell asleep in less than one minute --> not ok
Tired from the party, I fell asleep in less than one minute --> ok

I have the same doubts about the "placeholder it", could Ron/Stacey shed some light on this?

OK, let's look at A and see how you might understand the it as a placeholder for an infinitive subject or object:

Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.

To streamline:

Commitment makes it likely to miss signs of trouble.

But to miss signs of trouble doesn't make sense as a subject here. You can see this by putting that infinitive in the subject spot:

To miss signs of trouble...what?...is likely? But that's not what the original sentence means.

And to miss signs of trouble doesn't work as an object either. What would you need to make it an object? Well, you would need for someone to be likely to miss signs. The following sentence is awkward, but grammatically defensible:

Commitment makes it likely for an executive to miss signs of trouble.

Much more important, because more accessible by the good test-taker, in the whole sentence C,

Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.

the second it would be assumed to have the same antecedent as the first it, namely executive.

Ron..can u plz explain how the following part is correct.??

"especially one that has worked well in the past"

if the strategy worked well in the past then how can we use present perfect "Has worked" ??

style.rohit007,

The use of Present perfect is ok because its effect is still true today. The strategy has worked well in the past and is still being used today.

xyin,

The use of "one" is not restricted to people only.

e.g. David took Mary to a flower shop and asked her to pick one.

Regards

Sunil

the present perfect can actually be used for a past action -- even one that does not continue to the present and that has no chance of ever recurring -- as long as that action is relevant to the present situation in some way.

for instance:
i played high school football in the early to mid-1990s. obviously, i will never play high school football again; also, this action is distinctly in the past (since i graduated from high school almost twenty years ago). nevertheless, observe the following usages, both of which are correct:

(Talking to someone in a bar, in a situation that has nothing directly to do with high school football)
I played high school football.
here, the normal past tense is used, because this event is just presented as something that happened in the past, with no apparent connection to the present situation.
BUT
(At an interview for a coaching position in high school football)
I have played high school football, so I know what the players will experience.
here, the past perfect tense is used -- even though it's the same event in the same timeframe -- because the event is now directly relevant to the present timeframe.

this is not necessarily true.
it's true that “one” can stand for “an arbitrary person”, but “one” can also stand for “a particular instance of an aforementioned item/event/whatever”.

in fact, i just used “one” in this sense in my previous post:

in this example, “one” stands for “a past action”.

in the problem in this thread, “one” stands for “a course of action”.

--

Sunil:



nope -- you can't use “one” in this way unless the sentence actually mentions the thing that you are talking about.
in this context, “one” seems to mean one flower, or perhaps one bouquet of flowers -- but the sentence doesn't say either “flower(s)” or “bouquet(s) of flowers”, so it's incorrect.
if you interpret this sentence literally, then david is asking mary to pick an entire flower shop (because that's the only noun in the sentence to which “one” can refer).

I know option (D) is wrong because "misinterpreting" should be "misinterpret".
I just want to confirm whether in "... makes them likely to ..." "them" is also wrong, since "Executives’ being" is a possessive.

yep.
possessives are adjectives, not nouns, so executives' is not an appropriate antecedent for a pronoun.