[hollerith]

>Usually that term is a way of deceiving people into thinking the company's goal is to serve "the community"

It can also encourage workers to consider the needs of customers and suppliers, the ignoring of which will tend to eventually harm the company and its shareholders. I.e., it is not always a weasel word.

[AlexandrB]

It's almost always a weasel word because if you meant customer you would just say customer. Saying "stakeholder" permits a level of ambiguity about whose interests are being represented.

[hollerith]

If I mean "customers, suppliers, neighboring businesses, employees, their families, investors and anyone else affected by my decision", should I write that out or should I just write "stakeholders"?

[fair_enough]

Only if you earnestly give a rat's ass about all of the above.

Again, you're thinking of an "agile" stakeholder- not a "stakeholder capitalism" stakeholder.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

[hollerith]

>Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

Because I personally haven't come across writings or speakings AFAICR in which "stakeholder" is used as a weasel word.

I will avoid the word now that I've had this conversation.

[fair_enough]

Like I said, that's the engineering context of the word.

In business managerial side of operations, "stakeholder" is definitely a weasel word.

The word "stakeholder" in "stakeholder capitalism" as used by the World Economic Forum literally means "every single person on Earth". Unless you think Klaus Schwab also considers the possibility of life in the Andromeda Galaxy, it doesn't get anymore nebulous than that. The word "nebulous" describes something cloudy and ginormous- like a nebula.

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but the rarity of the exception justifies the rule.