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.
[6][7] 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.
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".
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.