I was told my first day at work: You have to be here at certain hours and you have to get your work done. If I don’t have any work to do, I am free to do whatever I like as long as I am in the office.
My company also has a similar culture. It’s often caused by weak, incompetent and apathetic leadership. It happens when you have a manager who doesn’t want to manage. It seems common in technology companies where the best technologist gets promoted when all he wants to do is code. It also happens in consulting firms where senior people would rather put in face time with clients than lead their projects. Basically, the manager in question would rather not deal with typical management issues like tardiness, poor performance or any internal conflicts. Soon the mental patients, in effect, run the hospital with predictable results. And it gets worse when you hire the next wave of staff and they take their que from the current group.
We’re having that problem now. Our people stroll in around 10 if they show up at all, they’re late for every meeting and they push back when you ask them to do anything they don’t feel is “their job”. Well, a lot of them are going to be surprised next year when they don’t get raises or promotions.