You're talking about controlling human behavior with no alternative. In other words, as a parent or teacher, you do your best to teach and guide and give them direction and rules to follow, but they still might act outside of those boundaries. And these are children, who will try to be creative and go outside the lines, even if (and because!) it's against the rules. But when that happens, you can discipline, teach and talk. But you don't fire the student or your children. (You can, in extreme cases, expel a student from school. But you're even saying that any discipline should land on the teacher's shoulders!)
A CEO is running an organization where everyone involved is in adult, likely vetted (interviews are really common), and if they make mistakes or choose to break the rules, it's perfectly OK to remove them from the organization entirely.
Even a mid-sized company is a complex interconnected system with thousands of actors. The CEO can invest into training programs, external audits, training, and close supervision. But the amount of control the CEO has over an Accounts Payable employee is negligible. If the employee defrauds a customer by routing the payment to a personal account, should the CEO be sentenced? "Criminally responsible".
No company has more control, rules, regulations, checks-and-balances, and power over their staff that the military has over a soldier. If we are not ready to sentence a General for failures of individual solders/actors, then we shouldn't impose higher standard on leaders in weaker positions.
> ... company wide illegal behavior.
The behavior has to be systematic and a significant percentage of some subtype of employee (eg. salepersons) must be engaged in it.
But I do believe that in the work place, you are given direction and boundaries, and if you're going outside ethical boundaries or legal ones, then it makes sense that discipline or consequences come into play.
(And I think there's a place to argue whether laws are right or need to be changed!)