Is Business Continuity a Moral Duty?
“Business continuity professionals are forever trying to justify to their organizations the time and expense put into continuity programs. They display graphs and formulas to the suspicious upper management attempting to demonstrate that the effort spent in managing risk will eventually be paid back in terms of the organization’s bottom line, whether it be by preventing immediate loss of revenue or long-term loss from damage to the firm’s reputation.”
“But these arguments can be difficult to make. For one, it is very difficult to quantify risks. There is a human tendency to overstate risks that have a strong psychological impact. Many people fear terrorism above more mundane risks such as crime, even though crime is a far greater threat to most people than terrorism. Also, statistical generalizations of risk often do not apply well to a particular organization’s situation, which may dictate a very different order of risks.”
“But maybe there is a different way to justify business continuity. Perhaps business continuity is a moral imperative of an organization.”
- John Orlando, Ph.D., is the program director for the Norwich University Master of Science in Business Continuity Management.
See Is Business Continuity a Moral Duty?
Tags: ethical, justification, moral
