The Centralization Paradox: Centralized Expertise and Decentralized Chaos in Business Analysis Centers of Excellence

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Business analysis centers of excellence (BACoEs) promise to standardize practices, scale expertise, and drive enterprise-wide improvement, yet many produce the opposite: fragmentation, shadow capabilities, and dissolution. This study examines the mechanisms underlying this paradox through a comparative case study of 18 BACoEs, drawing on 64 semi-structured interviews, 285 documents, and 24 months of observation. Three failure patterns emerged: the Ivory Tower pattern (33%), prioritizing methodological purity over operational pragmatism; the Bottleneck pattern (28%), generating shadow capabilities averaging $2.3 million in annual redundant spending; and the Orphan pattern (11%), in which executive sponsor departure led to dissolution. Successful BACoEs maintained executive sponsorship continuity (4.8 versus 2.3 years), proactive demand management, scalable operating models, and outcome-based metrics. This study extends paradox theory by demonstrating how structural choices amplify or resolve centralization-decentralization tensions, introduces the construct of stable undesirable equilibria to explain intransigent failure cycles, and quantifies paradox costs to enable economic analysis of resolution strategies.