I FIRST heard the word “stakeholder” back in the dark days of Thatcherism
when some young Labour upstart called Tony Blair started using it. But it was my
mild-mannered, liberal father’s interpretation that stuck in my mind.
“Stakeholder?” he scoffed. “It only means anything if the stake you are holding
is piercing Mrs Thatcher’s heart.”
Today, Britain’s politicians and managers use the word, whatever it means,
whenever they talk about science, the environment, health and just about
anything else. They attend stakeholder meetings, set up stakeholder groups,
publish stakeholder journals and write stakeholder software. We live, we are
told, in…
