I've seen this in academia, for-profit, and non-profit sectors as well.

It's what happens when responsibility is not married with reward, or worse, is punished by those above you. Why take responsibility when all responsibility gets you is fired, scolded, blame, or a bunch of additional work but no accolades, pay raises, promotions, etc?

The only way to get around this, that has actually been proven to work so far, is to give a single body nearly unchallengeable power. Such that even if some mega-disaster happened because of a lack of quantification, nobody would ever dare punish, simultaneously, a super-majority of said body.

i.e. central committees of ruling communist parties.

Of course the downsides of such a system are familiar to many.