stakeholder = 'a party with any sort of interest whatsoever'

[David A. Daniel]

Dunno about US English, but in UK English stakeholder is a current term that
means anyone directly or indirectly involved in or affected by the
business/issue/question/law/whatever. Sort of like: Government is
considering building a dam for generating electricity. The stakeholders are
the land owners at the damn site, the contractors, the power companies, the
homes/businesses for whom the new power is intended, the people who live
downstream, the people who live upstream where the new lake will be, the
people who worry about ground hogs being flooded out, area
farmers/homeowners who use the water, people interested in the new tourism
opportunities on the new lake, boat sellers, hotel chains that might be
interested in building resorts around the new lake, folks whose homes or
businesses will disappear/grow/change because of the dam - en fin, anyone
with any involvement at all (which means you have major stakeholders and
minor stakeholders, and those in between).
DAD



Not in OED in this sense.

2010 (Nov. 30)
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2010/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-for-Calcium-and-Vi
tamin-D/Report-Brief.aspx
The new reference values are based on much more information and
higher-quality studies than were available when the values for these
nutrients were first set in 1997. The committee assessed more than one
thousand studies and reports and listened to testimony from scientists and
stakeholders before making its conclusions.

One might read the word here as being restricted to supplement
manufacturers, but I think that would be hasty. Surely not everyone who
might have testified was either a scientist or a directly-profiting
manufacturer.

I've heard "stakeholder" used several times on TV news (only within the past
year perhaps) to include people with an important emotional or intellectual
"stake" in something.

JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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