I've noticed in corporations, employees are not supposed to think for themselves or go "rogue". Like the lifeguard in the past year or two that was fired for rescuing a swimmer who was not in the area he was supposed to be watching. There's increasingly a top down approach to business where the individuals are not to make decisions but instead, refer to the manual. And there's extensive training in those manuals and the culture of each corporation. Back when I started working, ingenuity and initiative were encouraged, and there were no manuals to tell us what to do. We just made the job our own.
I've seen just the opposite. Modern manufacturing is about moving decisions closer to the floor and empowering the individuals to make great decisions and communicate their successes for others to profit from. Some of the work in process improvement works counter to this by over-emphasizing the documentation of new methods and trying to enforce them. The empowered worker recognizes the value of enhancements and implements them and continues to work.
In IT, the old school "waterfall" method had everything designed and set in motion from day one. Developers and other workers would then work to implement the project over a long lifetime and any change had dramatic impact on the end results. In this model projects frequently failed because the business moved and changed faster than than the project. In modern agile development, developers work towards a small set of priorities and continuously test their work and review it with their stakeholders who aren't the top level managers, but the people closest to the work being done.
I've noticed in some fast food restaurants, the person at the register can now make things right and give money back, etc. without calling over a manager to intervene.
But spot on right with US teachers, teachers with a modern understanding of the learner who are given sufficient autonomy are the most successful. I think this is critical in Finland.
Interesting and challenging work are now top key employee motivations over security and loyalty in the past.
