After LoadModule16 was moved to dlls/kernel, it started to strip path from module name. This makes it impossible to execute DOS applications (and probably Win16 applications, too) unless you are in the same directory as the application.
MSDN documentation on Win32 version of LoadModule states that path should not be stripped but I'm not sure how Win16 version is supposed to work. It probably uses different search order if path is not present, anyway.