I FIRST heard the word 鈥渟takeholder鈥� 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鈥檚 interpretation that stuck in my mind.
鈥淪takeholder?鈥� he scoffed. 鈥淚t only means anything if the stake you are holding
is piercing Mrs Thatcher鈥檚 heart.鈥�
Today, Britain鈥檚 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 a stakeholder society.
Of course, where there are stakeholders, there are bucketfuls of related
jargon: prior optionising, foresighting, downsizing and rightsizing. We work in
the knowledge economy, we get worried about social exclusion and human
resources. The only thoughts we dare to think are joined-up. Our situations are
all win-win. We don鈥檛 have to protect the environment, we just have to figure
out what sustainable development means.
Advertisement
This kind of jargon-laden nonsense is a certain sign of lazy thinking. Using
big muddy words is far easier than choosing small precise ones. It also gives
you power over others, for confusing your colleagues is as good a way as any of
controlling them.
But perhaps we needn鈥檛 worry too much if we don鈥檛 understand the new lingo:
if we are not sure, for instance, when to aim for low-hanging fruit, or how to
cluster scientific contracts, or whether to walk the talk. For we are not alone.
According to a recent survey of 1000 office staff by the recruitment agency
Office Angels, 1 in 5 Britons no longer understands the jargon their colleagues
are speaking.
I yearn for sentences whose meaning is as clear as a pane of glass. The rule
suggested by George Orwell in 1946 still works for me. 鈥淣ever use a long word
when a short one will do. . . Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a
jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.鈥�
It is not merely a matter of making meaning transparent. Orwell, more than
anyone, knew how powerful words can be as political weapons. Take 鈥渟takeholder鈥�,
for example, which my dictionary defines as 鈥渟omeone with an interest or concern
in a business or enterprise鈥�. You may not have realised it, but for the past two
years there has been a secret stakeholder dialogue between the state-owned
company, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) and its environmental opponents, Friends
of the Earth and Greenpeace.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the aim of such a dialogue was to
give BNFL鈥檚 critics a say in its policy. But you would be wrong. Instead, BNFL
has successfully co-opted its opponents into a meaningless charade aimed at
improving the company鈥檚 battered environmental image. Green campaigners have
been seduced into spending long hours behind closed doors, debating jargon,
arguing niceties and writing consensual reports. They have even fallen out with
each other, rather than with BNFL.
In this case, 鈥渟takeholder dialogue鈥� is no more than an excuse for exhausting
and dividing the opposition. Extraordinarily, many of those involved in the
process still seem inclined to continue it. A word of advice, guys. Don鈥檛 get
mesmerised by the stakeholder mantra. The word is not designed to change the
world, but to keep it the same.