[XorNot]

Which is why it's a saying about how it doesn't work: it starts from a faulty premise, that people know how to the job properly and aren't out of malicious intent.

When in reality, the worker who's not maintaining the machine properly, isn't doing so because he was never instructed in it's operation, his supervisor who's "been doing this job for years, never had a problem with this", the manager of the department loves how many run hours they're getting from that machine and "it hasn't killed anyone" is said when the dangers of not cleaning it are mentioned in meetings, and after all they don't want to look bad to the executives who are saying serious things like "the economy is tightening, we need to find savings!" a lot.

In that chain, pick out who is directly responsible for the situation? Better: pick out who can be told to fix this problem, and they'll actually know how to do it? Pick out who you kill as a lesson to the others that will actually be learned?

Suppose you kill all of them: great, so what are you now doing to make sure the next group actually do their jobs properly?

[ADuckOnQuack]

Why not target the individual with the most influence in the organization, the highest C-level executive responsible for overseeing the operation? The threat of punishment for oversight failures on high level executives will naturally result in strict company cultures of safety and caution since the most powerful person faces real risk.