In the societal sense, it is maladaptive - your CIO friend assumes that his friends deliver the best outcome.
The friend seems to be plainly stating they don't care if the max outcome is what is occuring or not, insofar as they all at least do better. Helping their friends out is more important than maxing out the quality of the outcome.
Societally, reinforcing and protecting social trust systems may be dramatically more important than maxing out business success outcomes.