This phenomenon is a function of attributing all the positive developments within a company to the C-suite executives. Just as shareholders profit from the productive work of many employees, the C-suite executives often receive credit for the achievements of a large number of people. I think it is related to a fundamental characteristic of humans, that being we can't understand information unless it is calculated into simpler versions ( concepts like medians, averages, variance, "who is the best", "who is the worst", "who is the most evil", "who is the least evil" all come out of the same human need to get simplified answers). When credit and information moves up up the funnel from employees to c - suite, it gets - credit gets assigned at higher and higher levels. It is not team xyz that did it, it is their manager, or their manager's managers until it gets to the ceo who only knows that "svp x was responsible for this successful product launch" - since the people at the top determine pay scales, if theres 10-20 million to pay out in terms of increments, the board rewards the ceo with 10 million because he is apparently responsible for ALL the successful product launches, the ceo decides to reward svp with 2 million increment etc... It truly does pay to sit at the table with the decision makers.