In the absense of capital punishment for corporations, fines can and will be seen as merely the cost of doing business. It feels like the only way to address this is by holding the decision makers (executives) responsible, but that would require piercing the corporate veil[1], which has disappointingly low precedent in the US [1]Edit: piercing the veil refers to holding shareholders responsible, which is a different…
There's nothing inherently wrong with that.
The answer, of course, is that fines can be increased to the point where businesses change.
Just recently, Amazon was forced to completely shut down in France because the level of fines made it impossible to run their business at all.
Businesses respond to incentives. Fines are an incentive. They can be set at any level. It's the responsibility of government to figure out the right level.
Also, finding the executives responsible for any decision is not nearly as clear-cut as you might suppose. Ultimately shareholders are responsible. Then they elect a board which elects the C-suite which hires the VP's who staff their divisions and so on. And approvals happen at every level but with varying degrees of granularity and attention.
The C-suite will collectively sign off on a strategic plan for the following year. Different members are aware of implementation details at different levels. There's very often no clear "the buck stops here" for any policy except ultimately with the shareholders themselves. (A manager approved the plan, but final sign-off was with their VP, but that was part of the package presented to the CEO, who brought it to the board...) Which is why fines work well -- they punish the shareholders.