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I think we could agree (perhaps?) that American companies in the 50s (for example) had pretty good buy in from their employees. This is where the memes about Boomers being loyal to their companies and so on come from. I think we would also agree that this buy in is probably lower today, with more people going through the motions. If I am off base and you disagree here, my apologies.
My explanation for this is that the specific ideologies being pushed today may indeed get less buy in. I would also agree the named roles that provide the bulk of the mid to low level push to cohesion are different (HR Manager today vs the secretarial pool or office managers and so on back in the day). I would say these roles are largely filled by women, both then and now and they are important to cohesion. But that doesn't mean that every version and every corporate culture will be equally effective at building it. Modern HR culture may not be as effective as secretarial gossip culture of the 50s or the big bonus HR culture of the 80s but that isn't an argument against the overall idea, just one execution of it.
Having said that, from the point of view of social cohesion whether you toe the line because you are a true believer, or toe the line because you'll get shamed, disciplined or fired, you are still toeing the line. If you are going to the cocaine and stripper party because you 1) Like cocaine and strippers, 2) Know you will be judged for not going and it may impact your career or 3) Think hanging out with your team after work is fun. You are still going to the cocaine and stripper party. You are still a part of the banter and inside jokes. No-one will know which is the truth but you.
If you use "correct" pronouns because 1) You think it is the right thing to do. 2) You know you will be judged and it may impact your career or 3) Believe in going along to get along so as to not upset your team, who you like. You are still using the "correct" pronouns. You are still seen to be an ally. No-one will know which is the truth but you.
If enough people get tired of cocaine culture or pronoun culture to the extent that they are able to recognize each other by their ACTIONS and start ACTING differently then you are correct, because now you can tell the solidarity is fake. People realize that no-one wants the cocaine and stripper parties (except Bob the cocaine fiend), and that HR can't possibly punish everyone. The illusion is broken. (Though as above, many people certainly believe that being forced to act as if the believe the illusion will eventually make them unable to see through it.) Indeed many of the opponents of communism seemed to recognize that:
"Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way." said Havel and I believe he was correct. For most people can and will happily live under an illusion they have learned not to question. Arguably the whole of society itself is such an illusion. We are built for it. We can hold opposing views and flip flop on them as the winds of social status blow. It might even be how we have managed to prosper despite the many examples of how society demands things that are bad for the individual.
To use a larger example, Christianity was exceptional at building social cohesion. Until more and more people began leaving it and becoming cynical atheists. But the church ladies were (and are!) still integral to its success. If you look at the failure and say "Well I guess church ladies don't help with cohesion after all" then you're missing the point. Sure if you look after the hegemonic fracture church ladies aren't helping social cohesion between atheists and Christians, but they did and are still helping with cohesion between Christians, (including those who only pay lip service due to their upbringing or their location). Their tactics are effective. They just aren't effective enough to overcome prevailing headwinds.
In other words if you look at places which don't have cultural cohesion then clearly the attempts at enforcing cohesion failed. It's like the anthropic principle, those social police must have failed otherwise you wouldn't be able to observe the failure. But that doesn't mean all social police fail, or that the role is useless. Because we can observe times and situations where they did and do work.
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