normalization process theory
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Normalization process theory (NPT) is a
sociological theory A sociological theory is a that intends to consider, analyze, and/or explain objects of social reality from a sociological perspective,Macionis, John and Linda M. Gerber. 2010. ''Sociology'' (7th Canadian ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson E ...
, generally used in the fields of
science and technology studies Science and technology studies (STS) is an interdisciplinary field that examines the creation, development, and consequences of science and technology in their historical, cultural, and social contexts. History Like most interdisciplinary fie ...
(STS),
Implementation Science ''Implementation Science'' is an open access peer-reviewed academic journal in healthcare that was established in 2006. It focuses on studies of implementation research from the clinical, biomedical, social and health services sciences, as well as ...
, and
healthcare system Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profess ...
research. The theory deals with the adoption of technological and organizational innovations into systems, recent studies have utilized this theory in evaluating new practices in
social care Social work is an academic discipline and practice-based profession concerned with meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and society as a whole to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social work ...
and
education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
settings. It was developed out of the normalization process model.


Origins

Normalization process theory, dealing with the adoption, implementation, embedding, integration, and sustainment of new technologies and organizational innovations, was developed by Carl R. May, Tracy Finch, and colleagues between 2003 and 2009. It was developed through
ESRC The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), formerly the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). UKRI is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) funded by the UK government. ESRC provides fundi ...
funded research on
Telehealth Telehealth is the distribution of health-related services and information via electronic information and telecommunication technologies. It allows long-distance patient and clinician contact, care, advice, reminders, education, intervention, mon ...
and through an
ESRC The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), formerly the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). UKRI is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) funded by the UK government. ESRC provides fundi ...
fellowship to May. Its application to
randomised controlled trials A randomized controlled trial (or randomized control trial; RCT) is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical t ...
was led by Professor Elizabeth Murray of University College London, and chararacterised Normalization Process Theory as a ''trial killer''. Through three iterations, the theory has built upon the normalization process model previously developed by May et al. to explain the social processes that lead to the routine embedding of innovative health technologies.


Content

Normalization process theory focuses attention on agentic contributions – the things that individuals and groups ''do'' to operationalize new or modified modes of practice as they interact with dynamic elements of their environments. It defines the implementation, embedding, and integration as a process that occurs when participants deliberately initiate and seek to sustain a sequence of events that bring it into operation. The dynamics of implementation processes are complex, but normalization process theory facilitates understanding by focusing attention on the mechanisms through which participants invest and contribute to them. It reveals "the work that actors do as they engage with some ensemble of activities (that may include new or changed ways of thinking, acting, and organizing) and by which means it becomes routinely embedded in the matrices of already existing, socially patterned, knowledge and practices". These have explored objects, agents, and contexts. In a paper published under a
creative commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...
, May and colleagues describe how, since 2006, NPT has undergone three iterations.


Objects

The first iteration of the theory focused attention on the relationship between the properties of a complex healthcare intervention and the collective action of its users. Here, agents' contributions are made in reciprocal relationship with the emergent capability that they find in the objects – the ensembles of behavioural and cognitive practices – that they enact. These socio-material capabilities are governed by the possibilities and constraints presented by objects, and the extent to which they can be made workable and integrated in practice as they are mobilized.


Agents

The second iteration of the theory built on the analysis of collective action, and showed how this was linked to the mechanisms through which people make their activities meaningful and build commitments to them. Here, investments of social structural and social cognitive resources are expressed as emergent contributions to social action through a set of generative mechanisms: coherence (what people do to make sense of objects, agency, and contexts); cognitive participation (what people do to initiate and be enrolled into delivering an ensemble of practices); collective action (what people do to enact those practices); and reflexive monitoring (what people do to appraise the consequences of their contributions). These constructs are the core of the theory, and provide the foundation of its analytic purchase on practice.


Contexts

The third iteration of the theory developed the analysis of agentic contributions by offering an account of centrally important structural and cognitive resources on which agents draw as they take action. Here, dynamic elements of social contexts are experienced by agents as capacity (the social structural resources, that they possess, including informational and material resources, and social norms and roles) and potential (the social cognitive resources that they possess, including knowledge and beliefs, and individual intentions and shared commitments). These resources are mobilized by agents when they invest in the ensembles of practices that are the objects of implementation.


Location within sociological theory

Normalization process theory is regarded as a middle range theory that is located within the 'turn to materiality' in STS. It therefore fits well with the case-study oriented approach to empirical investigation used in STS. It also appears to be a straightforward alternative to
actor–network theory Actor–network theory (ANT) is a theoretical and methodological approach to social theory where everything in the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting networks of relationships. It posits that nothing exists outside those relat ...
in that it does not insist on the agency of non-human actors, and seeks to be explanatory rather than descriptive. However, because normalization process theory specifies a set of generative mechanisms that empirical investigation has shown to be relevant to implementation and integration of new technologies, it can also be used in larger scale structured and comparative studies. Although it fits well with the interpretive approach of
ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...
and other
qualitative research methods Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation. This ...
, it also lends itself to
systematic review A systematic review is a Literature review, scholarly synthesis of the evidence on a clearly presented topic using critical methods to identify, define and assess research on the topic. A systematic review extracts and interprets data from publ ...
Gallacher K, Jani B, Morrison D, Macdonald S, Blane D, Erwin P, May CR, Montori VM, Eton DT, Smith F, Batty DG, Mair FS. Qualitative systematic reviews of treatment burden in stroke, heart failure, and diabetes - Methodological challenges and solutions. BMC Medical Research Methodology 2013;13(10). and
survey research In research of human subjects, a survey is a list of questions aimed for extracting specific data from a particular group of people. Surveys may be conducted by phone, mail, via the internet, and also at street corners or in malls. Surveys are us ...
methods. As a middle range theory, it can be federated with other theories to explain empirical phenomena. It is compatible with theories of the transmission and organization of innovations, especially
diffusion of innovations Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, popularized the theory in his book ''Diffusion of Innovations''; the book ...
theory,
labor process theory Labour process theory (LPT) is a Marxist theory of the organization of work under capitalism. Researchers in critical management studies, organization studies, and related disciplines have used LPT to explain antagonistic relationships between emp ...
, and psychological theories including the
theory of planned behavior The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is a psychological theory that links beliefs to behavior. The theory maintains that three core components, namely, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, together shape an individual' ...
and
social learning theory Social learning is a theory of learning process social behavior which proposes that new behaviors can be acquired by observing and imitating others. It states that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur p ...
.


References

{{Science and technology studies Sociological theories Technological change Science and technology studies