Show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome. More than once I've had my hand slapped professionally for taking ownership of something my immediate superiors wanted to micromanage. Fine, here I was trying to take something off their plate that was in my wheelhouse, but if that's where they want to draw the line I guess I'll just give less of a shit.

If you actively deny your employees ownership, then the relationship becomes purely transactional.

It's also possible OP is just a bad employee, but I've met far more demoralized good employees than malicious bad ones over the course of my career.