OK, first it is important to differentiate between a stockholder and a stakeholder.

The stockholder is provider of capital, the owner, and the profiteer of a corporation. Their role is that of financial investor, in that they lend their current capital with expectations of the return of greater capital in the future.

The stakeholder is anyone who has a vested interest in the performance of the company. This includes everyone involved in the successful running of the corporation, such as employees, customers, and the community at large.

Consideration of stockholder vs. stakeholder takes the form as a contrast of both business management theories and business ethics theories, and I will address both.

Friedman was a proponent of the stockholder theory, stating: "There is one and only one social responsibility of business- to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition, without deception or fraud." As you can gather from this, the one responsibility management has is to maximize profit in order to satisfy and reward the stockholders, the owners, the investors in the company. The management theory would state that such a goal would be the best manner in which to run the company. High profits turns to high revenue and readily available capital, both of which are key components to a healthy business. The ethical theory would state that it is the most ethical manner in which to run the company, as the company belongs to the stockholders. The stockholders gave their money to the corporation and management has the responsibility to repay this to the best of their abilities. There are other arguments that pertain to the market and economics but we can pass on those.

Stakeholder first theories, on the other hand, state that corporate management has obligations not only to stockholders, but to every other group that can stake a claim to the performance of the business. As a management theory, the stakeholder theory held that a business is most successfully run when it considers the well-being of every stakeholder. It accounts for the good-will that is generated by such management practices. As an ethical theory, it rests on the moral sentiment that all people should be treated as ends, not as means to profit.

In the end, I would say that the stakeholder theory is the better of the two for both types of theories. However, the stakeholder theory has been used to argue that all stakeholders should be included in decision making processes. This is not true for either theory. First management is best done by managers, not be a democratic vote of uninformed and untrained employees. Secondly, ethically speaking, treating someone as an end and not as a mean to stockholder well being only requires that one uphold agreed upon terms of employment.