Companies are not sentient “profit-maximizing machines, they’re a collection of people. And it’s people making the decisions.
Individually the organisation is made up of people, but at large it's a big anonymous machine because those people are rewarded super-duper one-dimensionally: Help profits and you're rewarded or hurt them and you're out.
It makes about as much sense to anthropomorphise corporations as it does to anthropomorphise lawnmowers. They can not feel empathy.
The onus might be on us as the public to change the laws to outlaw bad behaviour, but this does not absolve the companies, and especially the people within them who conduct, condone, or reward deceptive and unfair business practices.