Can we enumerate the places that have this level of management buy-in? Is that a long list? Because they sound like unicorns to me. In saying that, I think that I may have even seen it once but it didn't last very long.
I wonder to what extent this problem motivates folks to branch out and do their own thing.
Or conversely, stay in a boring-but-successful role too long at a company because they're able to play the game leisurely.
The problem is ultimately that the management buy-in opens management up to getting taken advantaged of. It's hard to balance accountability, when management via HR holds all the power. Peer reviews are rarely more than formality, used to reinforce the manager's personal assessment/feelings.
Personal experience is that this shows up in a lot of places doing real R&D work because upper management has a lot of researchers, and researchers understand just how (unexpectedly) long it takes to solve hard problems.
