Milton Friedman takes a shareholder approach to social responsibility. This approach views shareholders as the economic engine of the organization and the only group to which the firm must be socially responsible. As such, the goal of the firm is to maximize profits and return a portion of those profits to shareholders as a reward for the risk they took in investing in the firm. He advocates that the shareholders can then decide for themselves what social initiatives to take part in rather than having their appointed executive, whom they appointed for business reasons, decide for them.