"We did it for the shareholders" may be a unique excuse in the realm of organizations, but governments, churches, companies, school boards, communes, etc all suffer from problems like these. The difference with public companies is that folks can vote with their dollars, or in an adequately free economy, can band together and compete.
A notable example is Ivan the Terrible and his society.
It is not the pubicly-held companies. It is the power of money to control, persuade, influence, or even empower.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is true that money doesn't buy happiness but even truer that not having money can cause unhappiness via stress among other things.
The problem is what people who have money decide to do with it and how they choose to influence the larger whole. Many of the people who have put their entire intellect towards making money, have desired to do so for the wrong reasons and therefore use it in a net negative way as you have put it.
I guess what I am saying, is that it falls on the individual to make the right decision, and not corporations, governments or societies as a whole.
Obviously my thoughts are unreasonable. I wish the world were unreasonable. Because then people might empathize with each other to an unreasonable degree, resulting in far less grief and hate within our microscopic timeline of our universe.