Academics define a centralized enterprise / infrastructure where executive control is the standard. Policies, ideas, strategies, doctrine all are massaged, manipulated and driven down the infrastructure to lower level employees, accepting very little input from the lower levels of the hierarchy. Important ideas are held close at the executive level. The latter resembles a military organization and the Industrial Revolution 1 and 2 infrastructures.

A decentralized enterprise may resemble an oval, concentric circles, perfected spider web, where departments and executives and subordinates are afforded opportunities to exchange information both ways vertically, diagonally, just simply intra-departmentally Ideas, concepts are exchanged at all levels and executives listen to inputs from lower levels.

Do we think CIOs will survive best in a centralized or decentralized infrastructure?