  Whatever the truth about businesses’ motives, a separate question is whether businesses have obligations of beneficent action. Stakeholder theory answers in the affirmative. In the classical profit-to-stockholder view, stockholders’ interests were supreme, but this view often lost sight of the interests of other stakeholders, particularly those whose efforts are necessary for a firm’s survival and flourishing. Who deserves to benefit from corporate income? A stakeholder is any individual or group that can affect or benefit, or be affected by or benefited by, a business organization. Stakeholders who can be affected by corporate activities include customers, employees, suppliers, owners, local communities, subcontractors, consultants, and stockholders. Stakeholder theory is commonly regarded as a theory of corporate responsibility—the theory that managers of a firm have obligations to a specified group of stakeholders. Many of these obligations are ones of beneficence, especially with regard to employees and other stockholders. Benefit packages for employees provide a standard example. Stockholder theory, by contrast, is the theory that managers have obligations—conceived as fiduciary duties—only to stockholder interests. In contemporary business ethics it is commonly held that corporate responsibility requires some form of stakeholder inclusion, but this perspective has not been developed in adequate detail as a theory of corporate obligations of beneficence, because there may be additional obligations of beneficence to contribute to social awareness and public policy even if the affected community is not truly a stakeholder.