It worked out ever so well for Yahoo when Mayer did it so surely it'll work for IBM who has two orders of magnitude more employees...actually, perhaps the end goal is voluntary resignations?
That's the only explanation that makes sense.
It does not have to make sense, could simply be a case of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
IBM could be a place where you just might encounter a pointy-haired boss from Dilbert.
Check out the book Corporate Confidential.