Fundamentals of Management 7th Edition by Ricky Griffin

Exercise 12

Exercise Overview
Diagnostic skills enable a manager to visualize the most appropriate response to a situation. In this exercise, you're asked to apply your diagnostic skills to the question of centralization versus decentralization in an organization.
Exercise Background
Managers often find it necessary to change an organization's degree of centralization or decentralization. Begin this exercise by reflecting on two very different scenarios in which this issue has arisen:
Scenario A. You're the top manager in a large organization with a long and successful history of centralized operations. For valid reasons beyond the scope of this exercise, however, you've decided to make the firm much more decentralized.
Scenario B. Assume the exact opposite of the situation in Scenario A: You still occupy the top spot in your firm, but this time you're going to centralize operations in an organization that's always been decentralized.
Exercise Task
Now do the following:
Given a choice of starting your career in a firm that's either highly centralized or highly decentralized, which would you prefer? Why?