Crisis Centralization Ratchet

Tech companies centralize decision-making during crisis and almost never decentralize afterward. The asymmetry is structural: centralizing is fast, decentralizing is slow, and loss aversion fills the gap. Centralization is a single directive. Decentralization requires building judgment, trust, and context at every level. You cannot directive your way into subsidiarity. Even with runway, organizations avoid loosening because being caught mid-transition when the next crisis arrives feels worse than staying centralized. When competitive pressure finally forces loosening, it produces shallow structural changes (squad models, federated org charts) that snap back at the first sign of trouble. If crises come faster than the loosening rate, centralization accumulates.