Most of the problems raise when big numbers are translated to small teams. Probably, a 10% of a big corporation staff deserves to be fired, but that's not appliable to 10% of every team. Maybe several teams deserve to be fired alltogether (boss included) and some teams deserve an extra-bonus (ok, boss included), but the big numbers should achieve those global percentages.
Bad bosses apply the corporate percentages top down without changes because it is easier to manage and they can say "I'm not mean, it's the rule" but he is part of the problem. The spreading of the percentages should be distributed through the organization weightened according to the contribution of the teams and sub-teams, so there could be an uneven punishing policy, which is counterintuitively far much more fair.