To centralize or not to centralize? It's a hard call made harder by power struggles. CEOs can force a more thoughtful debate by asking three critical questions The chief executive of a European equipment manufacturer recently faced a tough centralization decision: should he combine product management for the company's two business units--cutting and welding--which operated largely independently of each other but shared the same brand? His technical leader believed that an integrated product range would make the company's offerings more appealing to businesses that bought both types of equipment. These customers accounted for more than 70 percent of the market but less than 40 percent of the company's sales. "You cut before you weld," he explained. "You get a better weld at lower cost if the cutting is done with the welding in mind." Managers in both divisions, though, resisted fiercely: product management, they believed, was central to their business, and they could not imagine losing control of it. The CEO's dilemma--were the gains of centralization worth the pain it could cause?--is a perennial one. Business leaders dating back at least to Alfred Sloan, who laid out GM's influential philosophy of decentralization in a series of memos during the 1920s, have recognized that badly judged centralization can stifle initiative, constrain the ability to tailor products and services locally, and burden business divisions with high costs and poor service.1 Insufficient centralization can deny business units the economies of scale or coordinated strategies needed to win global customers or outperform rivals. Timeless as the tug-of-war between centralization and decentralization is, it remains a dilemma for most companies. We heard that point loud and clear in some 50 interviews we conducted recently with heads of group functions at more than 30 global companies.