ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the world in which health and social care organisations find themselves – where change and complexity are the ‘new normal’ and where volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are the backcloth. It examines the notions of competence and capability as means of addressing this world. The most popular means which has been adopted to deal with this omnipresent Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity/rapid, unpredictable, paradoxical, tangled reality has been an emphasis on increasing the competence of key people in work organisations – and hence to the popularity of competency-based approaches to education and training. The ways in which have typically viewed all organisations have been through the use of metaphors – that they are ‘like’ something else. The most-used metaphor for work organisations has been that of the machine, where the emphasis is on predetermined goals and objectives and where the organisation is expected to work in a systematic, efficient and predictable manner.
