> They think - rightly or wrongly - that it's a more effective way to run their company,

Well sure. Just because they think it's a more effective way to run their company doesn't mean that their understanding of "more effective" isn't equivalent to exercising more control.

> But...like, do you think management actually thinks in these terms?

People are perfectly capable of thinking about things in terms that are inconsistent with their underlying motivations. Dog whistling in politics works and is necessary because explicit racism turns off a substantial part of the population that nevertheless remains open to more indirect forms of racist policy and language. Thus, dropping n bombs morphed into "welfare queens." While such voters may be uncomfortable with outright bigotry, dog whistling rhetoric still appeals to them because on some level they are not entirely comfortable with true racial equality and integration. i.e., they harbor racial animus that motivates racist beliefs.

Similarly, managers and executives may not feel comfortable speaking explicitly in terms of exercising power or control over their employees while still acting out of a subconscious need to exercise that very power or control. Almost certainly organizational leaders do not form a homogenous block here. Some of the leaders proposing these RTO policies are intentionally disguising their true motivations by using indirect language because they know their true beliefs are socially unacceptable and they do not want to incur the social cost of honestly representing their motivations. Others adopt similarly indirect language and comparable positions without being consciously aware of the emotional needs motivating their choices. Still others legitimately believe in their pro-RTO position without necessarily experiencing any ulterior motive.

> because they don't trust workers not to abuse remote work

Lack of trust in their workers is a failure of leadership. Rather than improve their accountability systems so that they can trust their workers more, they impose an extremely unwelcome cost on those employees. I don't see how that is any better than thinking about the problem in terms of raw power dynamics.

> or sometimes because they've bought into some hustle-culture narrative

Hustle culture itself encodes a sense of superiority that serves as emotional and philosophical justification for the power of business leaders over their employees. It's an example of attribute substitution. They don't know how to measure actual merit or hard work, so they measure visible, loosely correlated behaviors. Again, this is a failure of leadership, and a failure to establish systems of accountability that can function in a remote environment.

It is difficult to see any real moral difference between wanting to exercise power for its own sake and imposing uncompensated costs on employees to avoid doing the hard work of being a leader. Especially because an organization that cannot hold employees accountable in a remote environment will be unlikely to do so in the office either. So far, the overwhelming majority of the published data around remote work and the rigorous analyses based on those data strongly suggest RTO policies damage rather than improve productivity. Likely precisely because organizations with poor organizational mechanisms around accountability continue to perform poorly in office, whereas those with strong accountability perform even better remotely.

When leaders propose arguments for a policy that do not actually justify the policy, it makes sense to consider what their ulterior motives might be. Many ambitious leaders possess a deep psychological need to exercise power over others. That's what makes them ambitious. In the absence of any reasonable justification for RTO, it is thus not unreasonable to attribute their position to that need for control rather than accepting the insufficient and unconvincing excuses they explicitly offer for their position.