That's perhaps the greatest power of the corporation: it allows people to do shitty things without any specific person being at fault.

Executives have a "duty" to increase "shareholder value". It's not that they necessarily wanted to do X, but their hands were tied because the "data" clearly showed that X was best for shareholders. Plus, if X was so bad, it's really the government's fault for not making it explicitly illegal.

Shareholders aren't individuals either, they're mostly mutual funds, pension funds, ETFs, etc... that makes algorithmic investment decisions. They didn't ask for X, but the funds they invested in will react to not getting X.