As supply networks have become more distributed, decision-making authority within many organizations has moved in the opposite direction, toward more centralized control, on the theory that a central team with full visibility can make better calls than someone closer to a single node. That theory holds up in calm conditions and tends to break down exactly when it matters most, during the early hours of a real disruption, when speed of response matters more than the marginal improvement in decision quality that central coordination provides.
The cost of centralization is latency, and latency is precisely what a fast-moving disruption punishes hardest. A regional team that can reroute a shipment or activate a backup supplier within hours, working from a pre-agreed playbook, will outperform a technically better decision that takes three days to work its way through central approval, by which point the window to act has often closed.
The organizations managing this well aren't abandoning central visibility, they're separating it from central decision authority. Central teams maintain the network-wide view and own the playbooks, thresholds, and pre-approved alternatives that regional teams operate within. Regional teams own the actual moment-to-moment decisions inside that framework, with authority to act first and report rather than ask first and wait.
This requires a level of trust that doesn't build itself. It comes from investing in the playbooks and pre-approved options well before they're needed, so that distributing the decision doesn't mean distributing the risk of an uninformed call. Done well, it's the difference between a network that absorbs a disruption regionally and one that has to escalate every disruption all the way to the center before anyone can move.