damn that's an old thread but here is why:
if you win any #1 award you get a score reduction of 1500 on your account, meaning all worlds, all countries and enterprises you have. Same is true for lower awards with smaller reductions but I will use #1 as example.
So if you look at the #1 Awards on KB for example you get 289 GCs for #1 Country but only 177 GCs for #1 CEO. Problem is that as there is less competition you get #1 CEO usually at a much earlier point then the #1 Country award. So either you have to take #1 CEO and fall out of the Top Countries as well or you have to reduce your score by other means like forcefully dropping of your Game Level by taking money out of the countries so they don't meet the requirements for higher levels.
As the Score Reduction is 5 Points per day no matter how much reduction you have this means to regain the score you would have without the penalty is 300 days, with the possibility that again your CEO gets #1 before your Country. So in the End it's about this: if you get #1 CEO instead of #1 CEO you get 1 GC per ~8.5 Score reduction while you would get 1 GC per ~5.2 Score reduction for #1 Country.
If score reduction would be linked to how many GCs were won that wouldn't be a problem at all, especially as you wouldn't need to wait until you get #1 at all, considering you get even worse GC/Score redution on lower awards, but sadly that's not how it works.