The article didn't manage to get a quote on what the guidance/orders for the reviews was.
For example, were managers given a target on how many of their reports were to receive poor reviews?
Or did the evaluation criteria change besides the target distribution?
10% get excellent reviews, 10% get poor reviews and everyone else falls somewhere in the middle.
I've even seen it applied to the Kinsey Scale. Presumably 10% of the population is totally straight, 10% totally gay, and 80% are varying degrees of total party animals after dark. Or something like that. That might have actually been where I first heard of the Bell Curve, but I've seen it applied in a lot of places since.
The worst place I've seen it applied is for DST daylight hours.
Bell curves exist, but it's strange that people only see it as a variation of the 80-20 rule.