Interim management is a great thing – hire the skills needed for a new job. Well guys, I developed a new concept, which I am quite proud of “Rent-a-scapegoat”.
Say, you have a company that has done something slightly immoral, i.e. child labourers that assemble your gismo-thingy” – a journalist calls you one rainy tuesday afternoon, and ask those darned questions, that gives you the feeling of :”Oh, shute – we are darned good fucked on this one”. While you think that, your thoughts wander to when HR and Corporate Marketing came up with the idea of a CSR policy set, that ofcourse mainly was intended to stroke the morally consious investors, should they be in existence, and to benefit the young-first-movers-with-a-degree, so the HR department could recruit them.

Basicly the siutation is:

You promised something
You got caught
… and you know it…

and what is worse: no-one would care about what you think; the costumers will cry “Havoc and blood we must see”.The press want to see you on your knees begging for forgiveness. The Investors want this to go away NOW. But you cannot really fire that bright kid, that came up with the idea, so what to do??

Well – you rent a scape-goat… Plain and simple.
Call your trusty partner in crime – a.k.a. HR Department, let them canvas the market for a optimum candidate with a career in the terminal stage4 phase. And give hiim/her a offer hard to refuse.
“You take the bullet, we pay you for it”. Re-date the contract so the person has 6 months experience should you have to document something or what ever you need it to be. Contact the journalist thanking him/her for pointing you towards this shameless behaviour that you OFCOURSE not were aware of. You showed brisk judgement, launched an investigation, identified the culprit responisble, and have now fired him/her immediately. Then invite the journalist for a luncheon in order to tell about how much you care about CSR, OHS, ethics and morality in management.
He gets an article, you get exposure, the “scapegoat” gets paid.

Feel free to operationalize this concept – it is for free… But feel free to qoute me as the inventor.
Have a nice day,
Steen, the HRDragon