Decentralization is the process of dispersing power away from a primary, central authority to several smaller, more localized ones. The decentralization of a federal government would transfer some powers to regions such as states or provinces.
In business, decentralization distributes certain responsibilities and decision-making powers away from upper management at headquarters to lower-level managers and employees, who may work at different locations. Franchises are one example of decentralization, giving individual owners of each store the ability to make some decisions. In technology, a decentralized computer network has no single, central server, decreasing the risk of catastrophic failure, as there is no single point at which everything could break down.