I stumbled on this paper very early on in my career and it significantly shifted my attitudes toward work, politics, and society. In short: people follow incentives.

Of course, the suggestion of "altering the reward system" breaks down a bit in the presence of Goodhart's law, but it's still very common to see (especially in large or unusually bureaucratic organizations) policies which create incentives completely at odds with the stated goal or metric. One of my favorite examples is the "budget game" many companies play, where each department/division/etc. puts forward a proposed set of projects and budget; the corporate planners then allocate the overall corporate budget. Departments obviously "sand-bag" and ask for more than they think they need (knowing they won't get everything they ask for); there's often a "use it or lose it" policy too, which leads to what I can only describe as an orgy of spending at the end of the fiscal year. This can be great fun for vendors, consultants, and so on!