Hm, yes to what you're saying but I'd still call them delusional.
The reason being taking established business management knowledge. Yes, you want to maximize profit (there's more to that, but let's leave it at that for here). You calculate how to do this and it is known on general that the positive reinforcement works better and more reliably than the negative path.
So for me, they're delusional in holding on to wrong beliefs. And they're bad managers too.
And let's not get started on the morality of course.