This makes me sad for the companies you worked for. I'm at the director level at my company, and I make sure to both give credit to whomever does good work, and to enable them to do it. I do enough good work of my own that I don't need to steal credit to be successful.
I mean more like C- and V-suite. Their priority is the company, and their own promotions. In order for both to excel, they need control, and to encourage the path they are trying to go down, and not side quests. This includes their reports and so on. There is a natural order to the hierarchical work of giving the upper-class what they want. As my last boss was very fond of reminding me: "this is not a democracy."
