Corporations have grown larger, usually because it was faster and more cost-effective to absorb a smaller company than to build one from scratch. As this dynamic played out, different corporations' hierarchical structures and overall systems of business (and manufacturing processes) got increasingly similar. The academic term for this is “isomorphism.”

During this period, people in many parts of the world reaped the benefits as efficiencies in production spread throughout society.

Decentralization, conversely, refers to the distribution of power, authority, or decision-making away from a central authority or hierarchy and toward individuals or smaller groups. Growing trends in technology and information sciences have begun to develop parallel systems when they have been unable to effect change in existing social, corporate, political, and financial structures we know today.

Whether fast or slow, in parallel or systemic, transitions inevitably occur when a complex system is disrupted and undergoes a significant change in its structure or behavior. 

No one expects the existing hierarchical structures of government and corporations that underpin nearly every part of our society to fold quickly and quietly let go of the reins of power. But as decision-making shifts from centralized institutions to decentralized networks, governments cannot simply regulate the forces of decentralization into oblivion -- no matter how hard they try.