Management for hire and interim management are terms that often used interchangeably. What are the actual differences?
The Norwegian Wikipedia article on interim management says the following:
Interim management (often called temporary management or management for hire), refers to accessing management expertise for an agreed period of time. In practice this means hiring an experienced and over-qualified manager with documented results to manage a change process, crisis or project or to cover a critical skills gap in an organisation. In such situations it would be unnecessary or impossible to fill a permanent position at short notice. In addition there may not be anyone qualified for the role internally in the organisation or perhaps no-one who can be made available for the role.
The difference between the two types of temporary managementcan largely be seen when it comes to quality assurance
Wikipedia equates interim management with management for hire. Both mean hiring a temporary manager for a period of time. In practice the difference lies largely in the process of finding the right person for the job and the quality assurance of this process:
Those who work with interim management on a professional basis often have access to an extensive database of skilled managers within most disciplines and thorough work is conducted to seek out and screen the best candidates in order to find the right person for the job, on an objective basis.
Most management for hire providers are in a completely different situation. They are often individuals or smaller partnerships making themselves or their colleagues available for hire. The client will therefore have a limited "pool" from which to choose and it is almost certain who the candidate will be.
Conclusion
The terms may be used interchangeably and basically refer to the same thing, but in practice there appears to be a difference in which providers use which term and the implication is that interim management involves better quality assurance as there are substantially more qualified candidates from which to choose.
