With regards to an organizational/hierarchical environment:
Asking for permission puts the responsibility of the decision on the person being asked, which makes everything slower and more conservative.
Just doing it and rationalizing it afterward tends to be more efficient, and helps to captures upside sooner rather than wasting time worrying about the downsides.
Your boss always has exposure to the downside. They may take it out on you emotionally (if they're a jerk), and throw you under the bus socially (again, a jerk), but they deal with the consequences in reality because the worst they can do to you is fire you. That's how hierarchies work.
I’d consider being fired a poor outcome, so I’m not sure I’m getting your point. After a manager fires a “bad performer” to look good, what further consequences are they exposed to?
You think the manager's problems are over if they fire the bad performer? First of all, it's usually pretty difficult and expensive to fire anybody (which also involves onboarding and training a replacement). It reflects very poorly on the manager, so it's not done lightly.
Moreover, after the report has been fired, there's probably still a mess to clean up. Obviously it's not the report who needs to take care of it. It's whoever is responsible for that area, meaning the manager or whoever they can assign to that task.
I'm not saying there are no consequences for an individual contributor who makes a mistake. I'm just pointing out that, at the end of the day, a manager is responsible for the actions of their reports. That's the whole point of their job.
Asking for permission puts the responsibility of the decision on the person being asked, which makes everything slower and more conservative.
Just doing it and rationalizing it afterward tends to be more efficient, and helps to captures upside sooner rather than wasting time worrying about the downsides.