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Every organisation is the lengthening shadow of one person. Even when that person has given up control, left office or died, their influence may continue for a while. As soon as the new chief is in place and working, his influence starts to dominate and the lengthening shadow becomes his, not his predecessor’s.

What does this mean in terms of day to day management and responsibility? Clearly, not a detailed knowledge of everything that happens. The boss of an organisation employing tens or hundreds of thousands cannot be informed about, and therefore cannot be responsible for, everything all the time. Rogue employees crop up in the best places.

The ‘lengthening shadow’ is the culture and the boss is responsible for it. A few rogues here and there are inevitable. As long as they are quickly identified and weeded out they do little harm. If there are many, they are simply reflecting the culture.

Take two current examples: the Roman Catholic Church and News Corporation. The church claims 1.2 billion followers. It has done much charitable work and been one of the world’s most important teaching institutions. It has had a problem of pedophile priests and nuns. Initially it denied the problem was widespread. I know because I have heard from the pulpit at Mass on Sundays the claim that “a few rotten apples” are to blame.

Any organisation employing an estimated 408,000 priests will have some pedophiles. Nobody knows how many there have been in the church but estimates vary from 5% to 10%. This is not “a few rotten apples” it is a culture. Nobody suggests that Popes, present or recent, are or have been pedophiles but they are the people whose lengthening shadow the behaviour of the church reflects. A Pope is not personally responsible for individual cases of pedophilia; he is responsible for a culture, in this case one that repeatedly denied and then tried to hide the problem.

The same is true of News Corporation employing some 50,000 people. Murdoch’s media empire has done much good work, provided many hours of entertainment and, through investigative journalism, uncovered a lot of malpractice. Now it stands accused of mobile phone hacking on a large scale. Nobody suggests that Rupert Murdoch has hacked personal phones but he is the person whose lengthening shadow is reflected by the organisation where hacking was – it is admitted – endemic.

The heads of both these organisations have apologised for the bad behaviour of their members, as is right and proper. Neither apology has, in my opinion, addressed the problem for which they were personally responsible. What the head of an organisation whose members are guilty of serious misdemeanors should apologise for is the culture he has established which permitted bad behaviour, possibly even endorsed it.

The Pope, Rupert Murdoch and anyone who employs fellow human beings should, regardless of religious belief, consider the story of the cathedral that was bombed in WWII. I cannot verify this story but it is told that a very beautiful statue was destroyed in the bombing. The broken pieces of it were rescued and it was reconstructed, successfully except for the hands. These had been a special feature of the statue and craftsmen were commissioned to replicate them, without success.

After three attempts to replace the statue’s hands the Bishop decided to abandon the effort and called for some wood and a piece of chalk.

He wrote these words: He has no hands, only our hands.