Or executives believe it is beneficial for themselves. I've seen plenty of managers over the year manage by "perceived busy-ness", and managers who liked walking the floor and to get a feel for whether people are busy have to actually do real work to check when people work from home. Or execs are more likely to be extroverts who like their job because it provides an opportunity for them to be at the centre of a group of people. Or enough board members are also on the boards of companies that make a living from commercial real estate.

There are many options, and many of them can be true to various degrees at the same time.

When you fundamentally change a balance of anything you're likely to run into all kinds of odd entrenched interests you may never have thought about, in part because many of them may never have needed to assert themselves before.