ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the changing context in which Organisation Development operates, including globalisation, technological advancement and climate change. A volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous setting has become the new normal. A major strategy to address this has been competency-based education and training, while a case is made that a more important and relevant requirement for such times is the development of enhanced capacity. Globalisation in particular stretches social transactions across both time and space. The local is shaped by the distant, and vice versa. Multinational corporations view the whole world as a single entity and the entire planet as a market. Their impact transcends all national boundaries, and they do not make decisions based on terms of what is good for countries but only on what is best for the corporation. Changing demographics, with an increasingly ageing population and a major shrinking of the younger workforce recruitment pool from which healthcare professionals and other staff have historically been drawn.
