[acdha]

That last dynamic you described is exactly what I saw at a very well known university: upper management knew they weren’t getting the accurate details through the middle management filter, but shied away from fixing the cultural problems. Instead, a major consulting company was charging a considerable amount per hour to have 24 year olds with expensive suits interview the actual workers, summarize what they’d been telling their management for years, and present it directly to the senior level. Fixing the system would have saved millions but required fights they weren’t constitutionally well suited for.

[ethbr0]

Absolutely, but this is essentially saying "We're okay paying a 2-10% tax on our revenue, forever."

I think that's the reason you tend to see these unhealthy dynamics in extremely conservative, quasi-monopoly industries (government, financial, healthcare), where there's no real question of if they'll be a going concern. And no real rewards / attempts to outperform at the cost of increased risk.