Where a company is (and should be) on the centralized or decentralized spectrum

In my work, I am part of a decentralized organization. This is based in our culture which is driven by our business philosophy. Impacts can be felt every area of our business from leadership, to compensation, to sustainability, to communication to our customers-- and communication to our co-workers. Everything. I've done a lot of reflecting on how working in a decentralized organization like ours has impacted our choices for internal information. One of the most vibrant examples I can think of is how information gets reflected in an organization's Intranet, it's such a mirror. For example, is the organization's Intranet gatekeeped by a certain group and updates outsourced or it is facilitated by a group but updates happen within the organization through a content management tool? What do those processes look like? Of course the Intranet is just one channel. In retail (and in communications), we often say that our most important channel is face-to-face, so we have training for communication basics and also update sheets to let managers have the facts, so they feel confident about speaking on topics. We're also really big in getting co-workers to have "Self-Service access" to information. This means we work on having a work environment that sets up co-workers to have easy to access information themselves. For instance have a resource room in every store with computer kiosks. We print little booklets often that let people "grab and go". I think an organization's CULTURE AND COST-CONTROL NEEDS seem to be two of the keys in determining where a company is (and should be) on a "centralized - decentralized" spectrum. For IKEA, being decentralized is just who we are. After all, we are the company that asks customers to get involved by putting their furniture together so that, by working together, we save costs. One of our company mantras is: "I do a little, you do a little, together we can do a lot." But for a highly regulated organization, a pharma company for example, culture and business thinking are very different. I don't think it's about centralized or decentralized being better-- but instead recognizing what the right spot on the spectrum should be, and them building pliable processes and support structure to optimize this.