You're right: jokes like this only perpetuate bad attitudes- "oh, let's laugh at management/engineering, they think they're so clever."
From my time working in improvement in factories, I'm very confident that the single largest factor that determined whether they would achieve any improvements was the attitude of the team in place. "We've tried it before and it didn't work" is the enemy. Rarely is the enemy "let's spend $8mm on un-necessary consulting help." That's really, really rare. Most people hate spending money on outside help, they see it as a failure (which is also a harmful attitude).
From my time working in improvement in factories, I'm very confident that the single largest factor that determined whether they would achieve any improvements was the attitude of the team in place. "We've tried it before and it didn't work" is the enemy. Rarely is the enemy "let's spend $8mm on un-necessary consulting help." That's really, really rare. Most people hate spending money on outside help, they see it as a failure (which is also a harmful attitude).