I think it's at least part of the motivation, but I think even the c-suite dickheads want to see an office full of people they "control" present every day. There's some kind of self-worth invested in having peons to justify living high on the hog.

Now that I think about it, some enterprising person could probably sell a software suite that just stacks outputs of every remote employee into a screen so the managers can see mouses moving, people on their webcams, etc, but all of it on one screen so they can feel powerful