“Decentralization may bring flexibility and fast response to changing business needs, as well as other benefits, but decentralization also makes systems integration difficult, presents a barrier to standardization, and acts as a disincentive toward achieving economies of scale. As a result, there is a need to balance the decentralization of IT management to business units with some centralized planning for technology, data, and human resources”

Response to the question: "You’ve been teaching about, researching, and consulting on business and corporate strategy for 35 years. What changes have you seen in that time?"
"McKinsey Quarterly interview," 2007

Source: Business Systems Planning and Business Information Control Study: A comparison, 1982, p. 31

Source: The structuring of organizations (1979), p. 211

Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (1982), p. 365

2010s
Context: Technology revolutionaries succeeded not because of some collectivist vision that seeks to regulate “fairness”, “neutrality”, “privacy” or “competition” through coercive state actions, or that views the Internet and technology as a vast commons that must be freely available to all, but rather because of the same belief as America’s Founders who understood that private property is the foundation of prosperity and freedom itself. Technology revolutionaries succeed because of the decentralized nature of the Internet, which defies government control. As a consequence, decentralization has unlocked individual self-empowerment, entrepreneurialism, creativity, innovation and the creation of new markets in ways never before imagined in human history... Around the world, the real threat to Internet freedom comes not from bad people or inefficient markets -- we can and will always route around them -- but from governments' foolish attempts to manage and control innovation. And it is not just the tyrannies we must fear. The road away from freedom is paved with good intentions.

Quotes, The Assault on Reason (2007)
Context: Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It's a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets — through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

Barry Eichengreen, The European economy since 1945 : coordinated capitalism and beyond, Ch. 5 : Eastern Europe and the Planned Economy

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 221

Young India (18 January 1942) p. 5
1940s