The rumour of the time was that James Strong wanted the QF1 crew punted but that the then Chief Pilot (I think it was Ray Heineger but could have been Ian Lucas) stood up for them and insisted that this wasn’t the way we did business. Im not sure how accurate that is as I was a pretty junior 767 F/O at the time.
The prevailing ethos? Probably much the same as other airlines. Pilot managers are generally pretty good I think. How far their scope extends given the HR driven world we all inhabit these days is yet to be fully tested.