It depends on what you mean by "have to."
If your RPG division expected to make $10,000,000 dollars this year, and it now looks like it's "only" going to make $8,000,000 dollars this year, does that mean you "have to" lay off people so your numbers are better?
If your company expected to make $100,000,000 dollars this year, but screwups with your digital initiative mean that you "only" made $95,000,000, does that mean you "have to" lay off people in other departments so your numbers are better?
To use a Hasbro example, if your overall revenue is down, and all divisions have negative revenue, and one division (say, Wizards) has positive revenue, does that mean you "have to" make 10% cuts across all divisions (including Wizards, your ONE profitable division), just so your numbers are better?
That really depends on the circumstances.
Hasbro is a publicly traded company. Somewhere on the order of hundreds of thousands to millions of people (thanks to Mutual Funds) have some fractional stake in the company - from individual investments to retirement accounts to educational savings vehicles. Everything Hasbro has on its books is the property of those people - not the management or the employees. Without those assets neither management nor labor can produce revenue. The company has an ethical obligation to put the interests of the shareholders ahead of the personal interests of both management and employees.
This means that you have to be a good steward of your cash flow, statements of net income, and share prices. If that missing $2,000,000 is going to cost your company its credit rating or mark the difference in return on investment between developing D&D and making toaster ovens then you'd better make the lay-offs to labor and management necessary to recover that $2M. Similarly, if recovering that $2M keeps you from a hostile board meeting this year but hurts the company's 5-year prospects you have to take your lumps now, not patch the issue just long enough to jump ship!
Violating the trust that thousands of people have put into your company - a trust that impacts their prospects for retirement, college for their children, and providing for their loved ones after they are deceased - is reprehensible when you misuse the funds for an over-seas junket and is likewise reprehensible when you misuse the funds to keep your friends and allies in employment past the time when the company could best employ their services.
- Marty Lund