That's because many decisions are caused by the environment, not the people. In the meaning that it's still the people doing them, but everybody on the same environment tend to choose similar things, and when in another environment, those same people tend to choose different things.

This is actually documented on management literature, with empirical studies and quantitative results.

That's a great point - though I bet there are many microclimates within Microsoft :)

Would love to read some of these management studies; it sounds intuitive but (as always) it's much easier to grok the bigger picture with concrete examples. Can you point me to some of the literature?

I don't remember most, but Peopleware has an interesting example.

About the microclimates, looks to me that how much of the environment is dictated by the top itself is one of those decisions affected by the environment. No idea how Microsoft is structured.

Microsoft doesn't have that many products that they can't get someone 1) high enough up the tree that people will listen to their comments and 2) with ui experience/common sense to check them prior to any acquisition/major change and make sure it doesn't suck.