A recent survey of the treatment accorded to the stakeholder concept across the business administration literature Donaldson, T., Preston, L.E., 1995. The stakeholder theory of the corporation: Concepts, evidence and implications. Academy of Management Review 20, 65–91., concluded that there is an implicit assumption that stakeholder orientation is positively associated with company performance, but that this assumption has not been empirically tested. In the marketing literature studies Kohli, A.K., Jaworski, B.J., Kumar, A., 1993. MARKOR: A measure of market orientation. Journal of Marketing Research 30, 467–477; and Slater, S.F., Narver, J.C., 1995. Market orientation and the learning organization. Journal of Marketing 59, 63–74., of the association of the market orientation with performance, also concluded that empirical evidence is needed about wider stakeholder orientation and performance, to expand our understanding of market orientation. The study reported in this article provides such evidence from a sample of UK companies. The theory tested addresses stakeholder orientation to consumers, competitors, employees, and shareholders, the potential association of these orientations with company performance, and potential moderation of these associations from the external environment. The results indicate that stakeholder orientation per se is not associated with performance per se, but that different types of stakeholder orientation are associated with different measures of performance, and that these associations are moderated by the external environment.