When disaster strikes, a business continuity plan can help a business survive.
A Business Continuity Plan is a structured response plan that is to be activated in the event of an emergency that disrupts the basic functioning of an organization. These emergencies can be related to virus infestation of the computer system, terror attacks, outbreaks of disease or natural disasters of all kinds. The purpose of a BCP is to have a plan of action in place to maintain at least some aspects of business life under these conditions, and, more important, to get the organization back on track once the emergency has passed.
Ethical Approaches
There are several ways of conceptualizing ethical approaches in terms of BCPs. There are questions of natural rights, solidarity, openness and the inviolability of the individual. However, the interests of the institution as a whole and its recovery cannot be ignored. The idea of an ethical approach to a BCP is to balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the institution and those who depend upon it.
Privacy Rights
Depending on the nature of the institution, likely the main area of ethical concern is privacy. In the central field of protecting computers from virus infestation and then helping to eliminate such infestation once it has occurred, opens up private files to the eyes of those teams that are prepared to react to such an emergency. This would be particularly important at such places as hospitals, banks and detention centers. Therefore, it is clear that the emergency response teams must be trained and cleared as ethical agents when coming across private data.
Property Rights
In emergency scenarios, the property rights of the people involved are an extension of their rights to privacy. But in both cases, there is more than the mere response to a disaster, but the nature of the oversight to which such BCPs are to engage. In other words, the existence of a BCP, admitted by all as a necessity, can never be used as an excuse for job loss, privacy violation or cuts in pay or benefits. Implementing a BCP cannot be used as an excuse to increase surveillance or to deprive workers of certain civil liberties in non-essential areas that affect the privacy or property of others
Openness and Accountability
BCPs should maintain strong communications with those affected. This is especially the case in terms of health issues or political instability that affect the life of workers. At the same time, the accountability of response teams and those that they affect must also be made explicit and understood by all involved. The basic issue here is trust, something that experts in the field such as Ross E.G. Upshur, director of the Joint Center for Bioethics at the University of Toronto, take as central to any ethical approach to BCPs.
Solidarity
Texas A&M University researchers hold that solidarity among emergency teams and those that they are to help is central, and in fact, synthesize all the concerns above. The response teams are to take no authority above and beyond what is necessary to restore essential functioning of all relevant organizations. Such emergencies should bring workers and victims together, not splitting them apart due to issues of power. Solidarity assists in the recovery of an organization far more than functional dominance.
