n.
An employee, consultant, or third party who uses humor to point out a company's flaws and to suggest solutions.
Example Citation:
"It was also the case that groups or localities ... would collectively appoint a jester — and in this less one-to-one relationship he still exists and is, if anything, in the ascendant. When British Airways appointed a Corporate Jester, he was jester to the company, not to the chief executive; similarly a number of cities are starting to appoint municipal jesters-in-residence — such as Salisbury, Leicester, Oxford, Bristol and Wellingborough."
—Beatrice K. Otto, "Fools are everywhere," History Today, June 1, 2001
—Beatrice K. Otto, "Fools are everywhere," History Today, June 1, 2001
Notes:
The following citation contains a hint about the first use of this sense of the phrase corporate jester:
The article the authors are discussing is "The organizational fool: balancing a leader's hubris," by Manfred F. R Kets de Vries, which appeared in the journal Human Relations in 1990.
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A different sense of the phrase — a comedian who performs at corporate functions — is a bit older:
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