I think a major part of it is a form of "institutional blindness" where the people who do see it don't mention anything wrong because there's only downside to doing so; the first person who can't be "retaliated" against goes "what the fuck is this"?
I've found myself being on the downside. One job in particular was especially egregious in how "pitch meetings" were simply where the art director let people toss out ideas only to dismiss each one and at the end toss out their idea. Suddenly everyone in the room loved the idea. It was obvious the art director just wanted to be able to say that they were open and listened to ideas from the plebes. After the third one of these meetings where I started asking for more details from the brilliant pitch, it was clear that I was no longer a fit. Eventually, the glitch was fixed so to speak.
