So all of the above can be treated as nothing but a semi-interesting fictional tale.The most up to date, comprehensive and best value students' dictionary on the market. However, IвЂ™ve lost the source that held that position and, despite searching for it in the internet, I failed abysmally. The reason for this was the longevity of our ancestors: in ancient times you were more likely to die before you reached twenty than not and, therefore, a speedy and legitimate means of tranferring ownership was needed. Supposedly, it was common practice to entrust that role to someone other than the owner so that property claims вЂ“ especially those arising from inheritance disputes вЂ“ could be solved quickly. In this sense, вЂњto holdвЂќ means the вЂњto have the custody ofвЂќ said stakes.

The вЂњoriginalвЂќ meaning of the word was quite straightforwad: the stakeholder was someone entrusted to вЂњholdвЂќ the stakes that defined the boundaries of a plot of land. I once read вЂ“ and please donвЂ™t ask me to cite the source, as itвЂ™s been many years ago вЂ“ that the original meaning of the term, or rather, its first usage was certainly not what it means nowadays, much less what is used in economic jargon. Does stakeholder push your imagination button, or would you rather drive a stake through it? The same antipathy вЂ“ or at any rate ambiguity вЂ“ in regard to stakeholding may be seen in a profile of British politician David Miliband that says he is вЂњcredited, or blamed, for inventing the term вЂstakeholdingвЂ™.вЂќ Our own Michael Rundell has an вЂњenduring hatredвЂќ of stakeholder owing to negative initial exposure, as he revealed in a comment on GillвЂ™s post about issues around.

In a recent article criticising management jargon, Steven Poole described it as вЂњplump with cheaply bought respectвЂќ, and indeed it featured in my parody of corporate language here a couple of years ago, where I mentioned вЂњoperation-centric initiatives push stakeholdersвЂ™ imagination buttonsвЂќ. Though its popularity suggests itвЂ™s a useful addition to the general vocabulary, stakeholder is not universally liked. The Corpus of Historical American English shows a similar curve: no tokens at all from 1800 to 1980, then a sudden surge.

Other collocating adjectives, such as key, relevant and major, indicate a hierarchy of involvement: for some stakeholders there is more at stake.ДЄ Google Ngram graph of the word in singular and plural forms shows how recent is its growth in popularity: hardly ever used until the late 1970s, at which point it rose steadily for a decade and then climbed even more rapidly. Many of the words that commonly modify stakeholders вЂ“ such as various, different, multiple, diverse, and a range of вЂ“ convey the breadth of views that have to be taken into account with regard to some organisation or development.

ItвЂ™s the second, more general sense thatвЂ™s more familiar in my experience. Macmillan DictionaryвЂ™s definition tags stakeholder as a business word and says itвЂ™s either вЂњa person or company that has invested in a business and owns part of itвЂќ, or вЂњsomeone who has an interest in the success of a plan, system, or organization, for example a worker in a company or the parent of a child at a schoolвЂќ.

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