Companies have run some absolutely outstanding PR then.

I have never worked in any company where I explicitly trust the CEO to always do the right thing in every situation.

There is usually no governance board, or review system to inquire about public harm: those things are usually external and fought against as they are regulatory burden.

So, in practice what tends to happen is that someone in the company just does stuff. Since humans aren't perfect this "doing stuff" is not always super enjoyable. If it's the CEO who "does stuff" then you're cooked because nobody except the board of directors can say anything meaningful: you gotta hope that the media wants to put pressure on.

Our elected officials on the other hand, are supposed to represent us, and thus media pressure is a lot stronger; issues that affect many people are meant to be properly reflected, and their decisions are open by default.