Standardization is a tool used by companies to make their resource pool more flexible. For Example, if project X needs more bodies to ensure it meets a deadline, management has a larger pool to pull from and divert to the suffering project. The other promise is of reliability and consistent metrics; the idea goes — the more things run and look the same, the better your metrics and repeatability will be.
Large companies that have this mentality forget their greatest asset is the people and the creativity they employ to get their jobs done. A Company with an empowered workforce that has access to a large palette of tools and good processes is able to shift with the ever-changing tide of technology. Contrast that to a company that spends years perfecting their ridged toolset and standards; you quickly realize change is almost impossible.
Great developers (and I believe great people) will naturally gravitate to great tools and will insist upon them. (See http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html). This being the case, tool selection is an exercise left to the team but process is the realm of governance. For software developers, If the process is to run a script with a specified install directory to install an application, I as the user care not what language or framework the script utilized, but that it conforms to the install process. </rant>