Often biggest problems occur when the decision-makers don't take responsibility for their decisions. When an organization wants employees to be "empowered" to take responsibility for their work, but not empowered enough to make decisions about the work, you have a rift.

I agree that agile or other communication-intensive methodologies can help bridge the gap between management understanding and management decision-making. The more management understands the consequences of decisions, the more those decisions will be informed.

In the end, though, it is an integrity issue - if management doesn't care and nobody holds them responsible for their decisions, the organization is broken and no developer can fix it.