Curriculum linkage Students who have taken a management course should be familiar with advantages and disadvantages of decentralisation. However, decision making is rarely either totally centralised or totally decentralised. How far the decisions are pushed downward depends on at least an implicit cost–benefit analysis. Decisions most likely to be decentralised are those with a primarily local (divisional) effect (e.g. product selection. Decisions affecting several divisions (e.g. long-term financing) are more likely to be centralised. If participation in budgeting increases employees commitment to achieve the budget (see Chapter 14), then participation in a wide variety of decisions (i.e. decentralisation) should increase employees commitment to those decisions and to the organisation.
