It’s not about the moral or ethical qualities of the CEO. It’s about the structural incentives of the organization as a whole. This is even more true in a larger organization, where any one individual has relatively little effect on the behavior of the organization as a whole.
Companies that don’t do a good job of making profits tend to go away, thus there exists natural selective pressure to put profits ahead of other concerns. Note that none of the above has anything at all to do with morals or ethics.
Yes. Emergent behaviors.
This is why a healthy, society-aligned regulatory regime is impoetant, to set incentives. If you make more money being decent than you would being abusive, companies will adapt. They are more like corals than they are like people.
[dead]