Standing orders are pre-authorized decisions, in writing, with limits: what the on-call may do ALONE while the decision-maker is unreachable. Without them, every small team eventually pays for the same gap - the incident that needed one decision at 3 a. m.
Source: [Dev.to](https://dev.to/hive80lab/standing-orders-who-decides-when-the-decision-maker-is-off-the-grid-4cp0)