One study found that although government policy and the industrial sector in which a company operates can influence its productivity and financial strength, management decisions have at least as great an impact on a company’s performance.

A) management decisions have at least as great an impact
B) decisions by management have a great impact
C) manager decisions impact greatly
D) decisions by a company’s management impact greatly
E) what a company’s management decides has a greater impact

(the official answer is (A) because of the two requirements for a comparison: 1) parallel structure and 2) grammatical expression. I agree with the parallel structure explanation, but not the grammatical or idiomatic expression. Isnt the idiom in (A) awkward and incorrect? Is it appropriate to say (have at least as great an)? Isnt it more appropriate to say (have as great as)...where is the second "as"? Isnt the correct idiom...as X as?

Thanks again

Guest, the confusion is not due to your lack of properly understanding idiomatic expressions, but instead to the somewhat uncommon phrasing of this particular sentence. The idiom in this sentence is not "as X an"; in fact, the idiom is still "as X as". In essence, the sentence is indicating that management decisions have at least as great an impact on a company’s performance as government policy and the industrial sector in which a company operates do; however, the wording of the sentence masked this proper idiomatic construction.

Hope that helps.
-dan

Hi

Still not very convinced, though I am somewhat trying to get what you are trying to say.

I cannot see as [adjective] as construction here explicitly.

Are we trying to the construction is :

One study found that although government policy and the industrial sector in which a company operates can influence its productivity and financial strength, management decisions have at least as great an impact on a company’s performance as government policy and the industrial sector .

If this is a case of ellipsis, should not we avoid ellipsis when it hampers clarity.

Thanks,
DCE

(1) Although chocolate is a popular ice cream flavor, vanilla has as great a following.

(2) Vanilla has as great a following as chocolate, a popular ice cream flavor.

I think sentence (1) is analogous to the question. You can rearrange the sentence as in (2), such that you would need the 2nd "as" in the comparison. Whether you need the second "as" is determined by the order of the comparison. Thus, I think DCE's suggested rearrangement is OK. Note that you are stuck with the phrasing given, so if you run into something similar on the GMAT, just pick the best of the answers and forget about the more "ideal" rearrangement you have in mind.