>I've never agreed with that. As a private company you can be in business for whatever reason you want.

If by 'you' you mean 'the owners' who are the share holders, then yes. What you'll find is that generally share holders do want economic returns at the cost of anything else, especially when so many of the owners each own only a tiny slice of many different businesses. Part of it is that it will be difficult for the owners to come to an agreement on anything else and so they'll go for economic returns.

There is also a selection effect concerning when executives at a company are replaced. Are owners choosing when to replace executives in such a way that selects for executives who put short term profitability over other concerns?