A traditional private businessman/entrepreneur inhabits a different world than a modern corporate CEO.

The former knows his business is not only his livelihood, but potentially his grandchildren's; his personal reputation and pride is tied into it, and he thinks in term of its long term prosperity and his personal honor.

The CEO is a hired gun beholden to a board that represents stockholders who are not even human, they are also companies, banks, funds, trusts, etc. whose decisions are often made by software. To them the firm is just a machine for making money, all they care about is the next quarter's profits. You can't expect a large corporation to run along the same psychological lines as the corner laundry, and the people in charge will have a totally different motivation and ethos.

It's not always a question of competence, or even ethics. Both of these men simply serve different masters, and they have different motivations.