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In recent years, my work has gone from a decentralized model, to a centralized model. Our head office has taken control of more and more responsibilities that used to be executed at the local level. It’s been a huge stressor and driver of anxiety for many people at my company who are at the branch/local level. Its a lot like what we see in the church — a lot of decisions are centralized, although local Bishops seem to have a lot of discretionary power over issues of punishment and ordinance eligibility.
Is having strong centralization really a good thing? Is decentralization better? What do you lose when you centralize? What do you lose when you decentralize decision-making and authority? Does simply being large justify centralization?
Centralization gives allows for greater instutitional consistency and frees up time of those at the local level to focus on different and presumably more important duties. Decentralization gives local leaders more autonomy (this can be good or bad- leader roullette) and may lay more menial, tedious tasks on local leaders to perform which would dilute their focus from the more important things.
It’s a mixed bag.
In the Church, we often lament centralization – except when we have a local leader who would be a Nazi without the checks and balances centralization can provide – or when we have members who would be preaching things we view as wild and crazy. In those cases, we want checks and balances – and, sometimes, we want a “higher power” to step in and put a stop to local autonomy. (I know you’ve experienced that, SD, as have others who participate here.) It really is a mixed bag – and the balance depends almost entirely on the real people involved. Either can work really well; either can be abused and work horribly. In theory, I like a balance that favors decentralization (teach correct principles with people governing themselves).
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