Market Basket

The Market Basket case focuses on how a family, when communication between members breaks down, can single handedly bring the downfall of a powerful, large, influential company. Even though a family owned company may start out working well, there is a high chance that after several generations, the communication between members falls apart and the avarice between members increase leaving the company to fend for itself as the families dual it out to figure out who has sole ownership of the company. Leon Danco, the founder of the Center for Family Business in Cleveland, and the author of four books about family business, has strong opinions about the involvement of family members in a company and would have several recommendations to the Market Basket families that could have prevented …show more content…
It may however be difficult for families to keep emotion out of choosing a new leader. Based on the Market Basket case study, the two beginning founders Arthur and Efrasine Demoulas started Market Basket with the best of intentions. They wanted a supermarket that was affordable for the low and middle-class folk who lived from paycheck to paycheck. However, the third generation is where the family began to feud. This descent into madness follows a generic pattern of many family businesses. Both sides of the family sued each other to gain control of the company, but don’t really care about what happens to the customers while the families are feuding. Leon had an example which mirrored their situation where “a bunch of feisty, antagonistic, successor-generation shareholders who understood little about the business and felt they were getting cheated.” Leon believes that choosing the successor for a company should be based on skill level and not who’s family had more influence and in this case Arthur T had more experience and was a strong