Table 2 Definition of concepts

Collective action

Participants in implementation contribute to their progress through work that achieves intervention coherence, cognitive participation, collective action and reflexive monitoring [23].

Context

Complex adaptive systems that form the dynamic environment(s) in which implementation processes are situated [25].

Coupling

Relations of dependence between actors, intervention components and dynamic elements of contexts.

Elasticity

The extent to which contexts can be stretched or compressed in ways that make space for intervention components and allow them to fit [89].

Emergence

The way in which the ‘global behaviour of a system results from the actions and interactions of agents’ [95] and unfolds unpredictably over time and across space.

Normative restructuring

Changes to the norms, rules and resources through which participation in implementation processes is structured.

Plasticity

The extent to which interventions and their components are malleable and can be moulded to fit their contexts.

Relational restructuring

Changes to the ways that participants in implementation processes are organised and relate to each other.