Way more often than we know, because organizations cover it up if they can, destructive behavior lays an organization low.  A frequent cause is executive struggle, which sometimes are family feuds.  Less frequently, a destructive contagion afflicts the workforce, which takes actions that threaten the very existence of their employer.  The Market Basket story has all of the above.  The metaphor I’m fond of is executives grimly battling to their mutually assured destruction, wrecking all around them in the process, while the rest of the organization is forced to take sides and/or is so transfixed by the spectacle that nothing gets done till its over, with the enterprise a casualty.  That’s the case here. None of this makes sense unless you understand that, once unleashed, primal emotion trumps the economic rationality championed by business texts and analyzed endlessly in management journals.