While I absolutely believe what you said is true--that developers often want to get away from these lindane of managerial activity--they do so at their own long term peril. FWIW, I would imagine most professors at research universities aren't excited by the idea of being on all of these same managerial committees, but outsourcing that to a tier of administrators sounds worse.

It also means that the managerial work is distributed amongst the team rather than focused on a smaller number of individuals. That distributes the power and decision making at the expense of individual productivity. I suppose generalists would thrive in an environment like this while specialists would have difficultly.