Over the years, I've seen many organizations rationalize higher profits through lower costs. The cost-cutting wizards live from a narrative that people can and will do more with less. They have no evidence of this in their context. It's speculation based on the evidence in some other organizational contexts.
Doing more with less, I would suggest, is a function of creativity not depravity. And there is evidence that if resource depravity leads to enough disengaged and passionless people, creativity will not happen and more will not follow less.
When people actually do more with less, it's because leaders during resource depravity concurrently nurture an authentic culture of creativity, or because the people are relentlessly creative and pull it off in spite of weak and absent leadership.