This is a feature, not a bug, as far as management is concerned. They’re often proud of saying things like “if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.” There’s often managers that are very sympathetic to the idea of pushing for quality, but then they’ll ultimately say something like “but, if you can’t come up with a number to show benefit, perhaps it really isn’t worth pursuing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” and we move on to the next feature.

The only way any real quality improvement happens, is if motivated individuals do the work basically on their own time. You will not get organizational support for it. If you’re lucky, it will pan out and an improvement will be made. If you’re not, maybe your refactoring causes a regression somewhere (nobody’s perfect!), someone notices, and if that person is particularly angry about it you’ll get yelled at for making “rogue changes” that cause bugs. If your rogue change was done in some other part of the codebase, you’ll probably have your access revoked (ie. others will be put on the approval chain to prevent you from making such changes again.)