I don’t know the reason, nor do I have proof of anything. But: to me this is a great time to consider Occam’s Razor.

Executives seem to (mostly) universally want people to RTO. Why would they?

They obviously have lots of data. If it was bad for productivity, why would they do it?

Answers seem to be things like “power trip” or “need to justify real estate”. I’m pretty sure most companies would save money by giving up their leases. Maybe they are all having power trips, but irrational behavior from leaders won’t win out in the long run.

My observation from my time is that, likely: some people are really good at getting stuff done at home. But most probably get less done. And I suspect the leaders find this in their data.

I'm sympathetic to your reasoning, and I actually think your conclusion about how people wfh is probably true (a minority finding it wildly more productive) but the problem I see is that most execs don't understand what a lot of their employees do on a day to day basis, nor do I think they could properly understand the data even if they had it as a result. And, if they did have it, why don't they show it if the conclusions are so self evident?

In reality I think it's much simpler: the work that executives (and some upper level managers) do relies on a certain amount of theater. They need to be seen (in person) and they to be seen doing work (in person). That's part of the "deal" with being an exec --- you need to be able to act the part. Then, they just assume that's how it should or needs to be for everyone else.

If everyone had this clear unambiguous data, you’d think at least one of them would have shared it by now now. Just one!