I agree with most of your opinions and statements. Though, I’d like to humbly tune just two things:

1) Management Styles: I would add a fourth one, which is Anarchic. Why? Because I think that sometimes not the manager, nor the team, nor both of them make decisions. Sometimes not the pilot or even the crew flies the plane. Sometimes the plane flies just as induced by outside winds.
From my point of view, this is really close the worst case scenario. You might not only need to modify your rule of thumb mix, but consider the possibility that the pieces of team are not aligned.

2) Rule of thumb: I believe that it should consider not only the fact of where the expertise to make the decision lies, but also the current probability of that “where” for making an objective decision. In other words, your rule of thumb may suggest that person A is the right one for making B type of decisions. However, person A might be so overwhelmed or affected by a particular situation that his judgment might not be accurate. In these cases is where good managers apply their eye to identify the need of an alternative or to assume the risk of having person A still making the decision. Perhaps, person C would make a more accurate decision based in his poorer expertise but healthier common sense. This is where good managers should doubtlessly step in… not solely to define working schemas, but most importantly to identify exceptions to rules, to deal with them and prevent/avoid/control edging and stressful situations.

Cheers,
Mati (or Fatso, as I’m becoming better known as)

Could be another collateral effect of the “buzzword”
driven recuiting.

Link: http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/08/buzzword-driven-recruiting