This records who owns (and can therefore modify) the policy governing this object: the local UCS domain itself, or a higher-level manager such as UCS Central. This is the policy object a vNIC or vHBA template points to; it's what UCS Manager pushes down through the fabric interconnects to shape and prioritize that interface's outbound traffic. A value of 'local' means the setting can be changed from UCS Manager directly; a value of 'pending-policy' or 'policy' pointing at UCS Central means an admin has to go there instead, which explains why a field sometimes looks greyed out in the local GUI.