1. As an employee, you will refuse to murder children, even if legally, to maximize corporate profit. You have your own ideas of what's right and wrong, and so do all other employees. Employees have a lot to say about what's going to happen.

2. Corporate management is often criticized for short-sightness and destroying shareholder value for their own benefit. This, and "the shareholder profit is holy" cannot be true at the same time. :)

3. Some corporations give shareholders little or no voice in governance (e.g. Google). The courts historically (per Plamiter's book) give the management benefit of the doubt in any ambiguous situation, and only slap the management down when it's clear they act against shareholder interests. Management has huge leeway. Further, corporate charter can be written such that profit motive is not the primary goal.

To the extent that a corporation behaves exclusively like a profit-seeking device, it does so on the consensus of the stakeholders, not due to its inherent nature.

If I may offer an analogy, American expansionism in the Middle East, is not an inherent property of a republican democracy, but only of this particular one, given to how interests of stakeholders (including foreign stakeholders) have balanced out.