Stakeholder originally referred to "a person who temporarily manages stake" but has evolved to the current meaning of "a person or group that has an interest in a project or entity". A company's business activities necessarily create an impact on the environment and society. A company's stakeholders are the people or groups that are influenced, either positively or negatively, by the company's activities. Future generations that will bear the impact of a company's present activities are also considered stakeholders.
The concept of stakeholder first started gaining worldwide attention in the 1990s. Key drivers behind this movement have been the expanding global economy and growing presence of multinational conglomerates, which has been accompanied by ongoing deterioration of the earth environment and widening income disparities.
In the latter half of the 1990s, corporate focus on shareholder interests was seen as causing an overemphasis on short-term gains that conflicted with the greater social welfare, and a movement began to shift from a "shareholder economy" to a "stakeholder economy" that recognized a company's responsibility to work for the benefit of its various levels of stakeholders. Traditionally, it has been the government sector's role to regulate and control corporate that caused a negative impact on society. However, the rise of cross-border corporate activities has revealed the weaknesses or dysfunctional aspects of government policies. It was also in the late 1990s that NGOs and labor unions began applying direct pressure on corporations to reform errant operations. The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility emerged from these trends and stakeholder relations became a core issue. Recently, attention is focusing on the stakeholders' "right to be heard" and the corporate entities' "obligation to reply to the interest and concerns of stakeholders".