1. I recall seeing a CNN story recently on companies that never lay off employees (AFLAC was one, if memory serves). With absolutely no hard data to back this up, I remember having a very positive image of the ones I recognized. At least for me, that would translate into choosing to do business with them.

2. Most business people are probably very bad economists. Economists sometimes say that morality shows how things should be, while economics shows how they are. I expect executives get the two confused with the rationalizations for their actions.

3. Having been on both sides of the “downsizing” equation, I can attest that these decisions are generally not driven by a systemic view or thought process. The form this often takes is top management handing down an arbitrary challenge (cut budgets by 30%, for example), middle management going through rounds of meetings with spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides to decide where to trim, and HR receiving the orders to sort it all out with employees.

All this is to say, there is benefit in that “why not” question: it exposes what it would take to make a company truly great, and it opens up those systemic ways of thinking.