ABSTRACT
The principal asset of the family firm is a large parcel of inner city real estate in a major US metropolis. The family firm's main business is unique–it doesn't really have competitors since it occupies a very special niche that cannot be duplicated, catering to a specialty clientele. Employees, Leadership is well known, have varying levels of ambiguity tolerance, willingness to take responsibility, initiative, and so forth. These concepts are covered in path-goal theory, situational leadership theory, and so on. Strategy is a very important topic in business. The reasons that the strategy literature was irrelevant for real-world professor are manifold. From the public record of failed mergers and acquisitions the spaghetti model seems to be widely used in the real world but vastly under-appreciated by academics. Institutional memory effects in conflict management are perhaps under-investigated and should be considered as topics for research in long-running disputes. The organizational ecology/environmental determinism viewpoint might apply.
