What happens is that, once a company is reliably making money for everyone, the need to "innovate" and make things more "efficient" is dramatically reduced. At the end of the day, most people want to just show up to the office, do what they're told(what they don't actually want to do), and then go back to their lives with their money. If some young engineer shows up with ideas about making things "more efficient", that can only mean people's daily routines get disrupted or they are made obsolete. Nobody really wants to make things better, including those who are running the business since their joy is in being in charge of lots of people(whether they're well-meaning or not). Accountability and integrity gets thrown out the window because, in order to maintain them, someone has to get mad at someone else, and these days people aren't interested in being the person who has to scold people or let them go.
As much as I care about my craft as a software engineer, I realize that every company suffers from this syndrome to some extent, and the most healthy thing to do is to accept that people don't want you fucking with their cash cow. I don't take seriously claims companies make when the talk about "excellence" and "innovation", because once they've got more than 10 employees and their growth pattern has a definite upward trend, those values really go out the window.
And you know something? There's nothing wrong with that. Most people aren't working because they want to. Think you can make things better? Go start your own company.