I agree that businesses should always been looking at costs, but only in relation to the benefits. Just looking at costs and trying to reduce them is meaningless.
At least they should
I know exactly what you mean and this is a very engineer kind of view... the point is, no matter how great a trip to Rome would be if your body is bleeding out right now you need to go to the ER first. A business works much the same but their "blood" is not so much money but rather liquidity and if it is in danger than they WILL have to cut costs and even in places where it hurts or where great things are done because if they didn't, they would be shut down from the outside. So just looking at costs might be vital, or it might just be some higher up trying to get a bonus. Also, liquidity on its own doesn't tell you that much about the state of a business.