That's definitely one piece of the puzzle but I don't think it's really the whole picture, plenty of people get bullshit jobs without knowing any of the business owners directly.
I think it has more to do with people in liberal societies, especially capitalists, internalizing "great man theory" to the point where they apply it to everything, including their business. After all, they are a "great man" that built the business from the ground up, it only makes sense to hire a bunch of slightly less great men to wrangle the peons that do the dirty work. I'm oversimplifying of course but I think that's the general idea.
Another part of it is that without all the smoke and mirrors of corporate organization a "emperor is naked" moment could potentially happen among the productive workforce.
That's probably what happened historically but nowadays I see even relatively small companies (100-200 people) create bullshit jobs.