Yes, there is a lot of cargo culting going on. People tend to put a lot of stock in the pecularities of successful companies and influential people in a (misguided) effort to imitate them. A better way to copy success would probably be to do some dry analysis, as compared to another round of "5 habits of highly successful people" or "what would Steve Jobs do". But I would like to argue that the best thing to do is probably to follow your own visions and constantly debug what doesn't work.

I believe the myth of the A player is also part of that particular cargo cult. Most competent people don't fit into a single category. Competence isn't a global integer value. An employee's ability to contribute depends on many factors and can change dramatically with the situation. Companies claiming to "hire only A players" are not getting this.