Inter-personal / personality politics in the office

One of the unfortunate things I've noticed about working in an office is the extent of inter-personal / personality politics - which is the aspect of my professional career that I have handled worst (and have least interest in "handling"). 

As an example, when I started work at one company, one of the things we (it was not only me - a group of us were involved) started at that time was tracking what are termed "blue sky" opportunities - projects that have not been formally let for tender, and are still at preliminary stages of discussion / consideration. We had a system that worked well for us (made sure we kept an eye out for the ads, had worked out who we would bid with for larger / more complex projects / etc), but, over time, a number of actions by others led to attrition of our systems, and it eventually died. 

Then a few years later, a more formal system, using different software, was grandly announced for the entire company. The people directly involved didn't know that there were earlier systems (they weren't working for that company when we had our earlier system) but the higher ups did: their silence on that is unconscionable, and makes me wonder how much malice was behind the undermining of the original system - I know (from third party comments and admissions by those involved later) that other internal systems proposals and initiatives were undone because of problems such as jealousy (and, in some cases, simple stupidity).

There is a stereotype of politics - which I know, from having interacted with so many politicians, is predominantly wrong - of people doing anything to be able to have a fanfare about their alleged accomplishments: I think that applies to some people in business - technical people included, and not all managers by any means (particularly the newer leaders are often better or even good people, who, for whatever reason, are paying attention to things like diversity & inclusion, no modern slavery in supply chains, etc).

This has happened on around a dozen matters (at least) in engineering, and many others outside of engineering, and I am quite tired of people's duplicity / lack of self awareness / immaturity / selfishness / jealousy / etc. 

It does also show, in my opinion, one group of the flaws of the competitive-capitalist-systems that so many people are addicted to (quite possibly because they still crave parental approval). 

This is, I am aware, a very brief article: if I ever retire I will be able to expand it, but time (especially family duties) and health/limited energy - and the need to protect the guilty - have limited what I can write at the moment. 

(On a related matter, it can be very wearing to write letters advocating for change, but never receive any acknolwedgement of that when change happens. I'm well aware that many others have likely contributed to that effort, but politicians saying something along the lines of "we've listened to you", or "we've heard you" before they get into selling the wonderment of their response wouldn't go amiss.)