Planned Approach to Change Essay

The dress of Kurt Lewin rule the theory and practice of compound manage workforcet for over 40 years. However, in the past 20 years, Lewins antenna to modification, particularly the 3-Step model, has attracted major criticisms. The gravest cardinal unitarys are that his work assumed organizations operate in a stable state was solo suitable for small-scale salmagundi projects ignored organizational power and political sympathies and was top-down and management-driven. This denomination seeks to re-appraise Lewins work and challenge the validity of these thinkings. It begins by describing Lewins background and beliefs, peculiarly his commitment to resolving social conict.The expression then moves on to examine the main elements of his plotted approach to change theme Theory root word Dynamics work on seek and the 3-Step model. This is followed by a brief summary of the major developments in the eld of organizational change since Lewins death which, in turn, leads to an examination of the main criticisms trainled at Lewins work. The article concludes by arguing that rather than being superannuated or redundant, Lewins approach is still germane(predicate) to the modern initiation.INTRODUCTIONFreud the clinician and Lewin the experimentalist these are the two men whose names leave stand out before all others in the history of our psychological era.The higher up quotation is taken from Edward C Tolmans memorial address for Kurt Lewin delivered at the 1947 Convention of the Ameri gouge psychological Association (quoted in Marrow, 1969, p. ix). To many an(prenominal) community today it will seem strange that Lewin should amaze been stipulation equal status with Freud. Some 50 years after his death, Lewin is like a shot mainly remembered as the precedent of the 3-Step model of changeUSA.Address for reprints Bernard Burnes, Manchester School of Management, UMIST, Manchester M60 1QD, UK (Bernard.Burnesumist.ac.uk).dismissed as outdated (B urnes, 2000 Dawson, 1994 Dent and Goldberg, 1999 Hatch, 1997 Kanter et al., 1992 Marshak, 1993). Yet, as this article will argue, his contribution to our registering of individualist and group deportment and the role these play in organizations and familiarity was broad and is still relevant. In todays turbulent and changing world, one might expect Lewins pioneering work on change to be seized upon with gratitude, specially given the high failure rate of many change programmes (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2001 Kearney, 1989 Kotter, 1996 Stickland, 1998 Waclawski, 2002 Wastell et al., 1994 Watcher, 1993 Whyte and Watcher, 1992 Zairi et al., 1994).Unfortunately, his commitment to extending democratic values in society and his work on theater Theory, root word Dynamics and Action search which, together with his 3-Step model, formed an inter- coupled, elaborate and robust approach to Planned change, encounter received less and less attention (Ash, 1992 Bargal et al., 1992 Cooke, 1 999). Indeed, from the 1980s, even Lewins work on change was to a greater extent and more criticized as relevant only to small-scale changes in stable conditions, and for ignoring issues such(prenominal) as organizational administration and conict. In its place, writers sought to promote a find out of change as being constant, and as a political process within organizations (Dawson, 1994 Pettigrew et al., 1992 Wilson, 1992).The purpose of this article is to re-appraise Lewin and his work.. The article begins by describing Lewins background, especially the origins of his commitment to resolving social conict. It then moves on to examine the main elements of his Planned approach to change. This is followed by a description of developments in the eld of organizational change since Lewins death, and an evaluation of the criticisms levelled against his work. The article concludes by arguing that rather than being outdated, Lewins Planned approach is still very relevant to the needs of the modern world.LEWINS BACKGROUNDFew social scientists can call for received the level of praise and admirationthat has been heaped upon Kurt Lewin (Ash, 1992 Bargal et al., 1992 Dent and Goldberg, 1999 Dickens and Watkins, 1999 Tobach, 1994). As Edgar Schein (1988, p. 239) enthusiastically commentedThere is little question that the rational father of contemporary theories of applied behavioural science, action research and planned change is Kurt Lewin. His seminal work on leadership style and the experiments on planned change which took place in World state of war II in an effort to change consumer behaviour launched a whole generation of research in group dynamics and the implementation of change programs. 978 B. Burnes Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004For most of his living, Lewins main preoccupation was the declaration of social con- ict and, in particular, the problems of minority or disadvantaged groups. Underpinning this preoccupation was a strong belief that only the perm eation of democratic values into all facets of society could prevent the worst extremes of social conict. As his wife wrote in the Preface to a volume of his collected work published after his deathKurt Lewin was so constantly and predominantly preoccupied with the task of advancing the conceptual representation of the social-psychological world, and at the like time he was so lled with the urgent desire to use his suppositional insight for the building of a better world, that it is difcult to decide which of these two sources of motivation owed with greater energy or vigour. (Lewin, 1948b)To a self-aggrandising extent, his interests and beliefs stemmed from his background as a German Jew. Lewin was born in 1890 and, for a Jew growing up in Germany, at this time, ofcially-approved anti-Semitism was a fact of life. Few Jews could expect to achieve a responsible post in the civil service or universities. Despite this, Lewin was awarded a doctorate at the University of Berlin in 19 16 and went on to teach there. Though he was never awarded tenured status, Lewin achieved a growing international composition in the 1920s as a leader in his eld (Lewin, 1992). However, with the sharpen of the Nazi Party, Lewin know that the position of Jews in Germany wasincreasingly threatened. The election of Hitler as Chancellor in 1933 was the nal straw for him he resigned from the University and go to America (Marrow, 1969).In America, Lewin found a job rst as a refugee scholar at Cornell University and then, from 1935 to 1945, at the University of Iowa. Here he was to embark on an ambitious programme of research which covered topics such as child-parent relations, conict in marriage, styles of leadership, worker motivation and performance, conict in industry, group problem-solving, communication and attitude change, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-racism, difference and prejudice, integration-segregation, peace, war and poverty (Bargal et al., 1992 Cartwright, 1952 Lewin, 19 48a). As Cooke (1999) notes, given the prevalence of racism and antiSemitism in America at the time, a great deal of this work, especially his increasingly public advocacy in support of disadvantaged groups, put Lewin on the political left.During the years of the Second World War, Lewin did some(prenominal) work for the American war effort. This included studies of the morale of front-line soldiers and psychological warfare, and his famous study proposeed at persuading American housewives to buy cheaper cuts of meat (Lewin, 1943a Marrow, 1969). He was in any case much in demand as a speaker on minority and inter-group relations Kurt Lewin 979 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004(Smith, 2001). These activities chimed with one of his central preoccupations, which was how Germanys authoritarian and racist culture could be replaced with one imbued with democratic values. He see democracy, and the spread of democratic values throughout society, as the central bastion against authoritarian ism and despotism. That he viewed the governance of democracy as a major task, and avoided simplistic and structural recipes, can be gleaned from the following extracts from his article on The special case of Germany (Lewin, 1943b)Nazi culture . . . is deeply rooted, particularly in the youth on whom the . . . future depends. It is a culture which is centred around power as the supreme value and which denounces justice and equating . . . (p. 43) To bestable, a cultural change has to penetrate all aspects of a nations life. The change must, in short, be a change in the cultural atmosphere, not merely a change of a single item. (p. 46)Change in culture requires the change of leadership forms in every passing game of life. At the start, particularly important is leadership in those social areas which are fundamental from the point of view of power. (p. 55)With the end of the War, Lewin established the look for Center for meeting Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog y. The aim of the Center was to investigate all aspects of group behaviour, especially how it could be changed. At the same time, he was in like manner chief architect of the Commission on Community Interrelations (CCI). Founded and funded by the American Jewish Congress, its aim was the eradication of discrimination against all minority groups. As Lewin wrote at the time, We Jews will have to ght for ourselves and we will do so strongly and with good conscience. We also know that the ght of the Jews is part of the ght of all minorities for democratic equality of rights and opportunities . . . (quoted in Marrow, 1969, p. 175). In pursuing this objective, Lewin believed that his work on crowd Dynamics and Action Research would provide the key tools for the CCI.Lewin was also inuential in establishing the Tavistock Institute in the UK and its Journal, Human Relations ( Jaques, 1998 Marrow, 1969). In addition, in 1946, the Connecticut cite Inter-Racial Commission asked Lewin to help train leaders and conduct research on the most effective room of combating racial and religious prejudice in communities. This led to the development of sensitivity training and the creation, in 1947, of the now famous National Training Laboratories. However, his huge workload took its toll on his health, and on 11 February 1947 he died of a heart attack (Lewin, 1992).980 B. Burnes Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004LEWINS WORKLewin was a humanitarian who believed that only by resolving social conict, whether it be religious, racial, marital or industrial, could the human condition be improved. Lewin believed that the key to resolving socialconict was to facilitate learning and so enable individuals to envision and restructure their perceptions of the world around them. In this he was much inuenced by the Gestalt psychologists he had worked with in Berlin (Smith, 2001). A unifying(a) theme of much of his work is the view that . . . the group to which an individual belongs is the groun d for his perceptions, his feelings and his actions (Allport, 1948, p. vii).Though Field Theory, Group Dynamics, Action Research and the 3-Step model of change are often treated as separate themes of his work, Lewin byword them as a unied whole with each element supporting and reinforcing the others and all of them necessary to understand and bring more or less Planned change, whether it be at the level of the individual, group, organization or even society (Bargal and Bar, 1992 Kippenberger, 1998a, 1998b Smith, 2001). As Allport (1948, p. ix) states All of his concepts, whatever root-metaphor they employ, comprise a single wellintegrated system. This can be seen from examining these four-spot aspects of his work in turn.Field TheoryThis is an approach to perceptiveness group behaviour by seek to map out the totality and complexity of the eld in which the behaviour takes place (Back, 1992). Lewin hold that to understand any situation it was necessary that One should view the p resent situation the status quo as being maintained by certain conditions or forces (Lewin, 1943a, p. 172). Lewin (1947b) postulated that group behaviour is an intricate set of symbolic interactions and forces that not only affect group structures, but also modify individual behaviour. Therefore, individual behaviour is a function of the group environment or eld, as he preconditioned it. Consequently, any changes in behaviour stem from changes, be they small or large, in the forces within the eld (Lewin, 1947a).Lewin dened a eld as a totality of coexisting facts which are conceived of as mutually interdependent . . . (Lewin, 1946, p. 240). Lewin believed that a eld was in a continuous state of adaptation and that Change and constancy are relative concepts group life is never without change, merely differences in the amount and type of change exist (Lewin, 1947a, p. 199). This is why Lewin used the term quasi-stationary equilibrium to indicate that whilst there might be a rhythm a nd pattern to the behaviour and processes of a group, these tendedto uctuate constantly owing to changes in the forces or circumstances that impinge on the group.Lewins view was that if one could identify, plot and establish the potency of these forces, then it would be possible not only to understand why individuals, Kurt Lewin 981 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004groups and organizations act as they do, but also what forces would need to be diminished or strengthen in secern to bring or so change. In the main, Lewin saw behavioural change as a slow process however, he did recognize that under certain circumstances, such as a personal, organizational or societal crisis, the various forces in the eld can shift quickly and radically. In such situations, established routines and behaviours break down and the status quo is no longer viable new patterns of activity can rapidly emerge and a new equilibrium (or quasistationary equilibrium) is formed (Kippenberger, 1998a Lewin, 1947a). Desp ite its obvious value as a vehicle for understanding and changing group behaviour, with Lewins death, the general interest in Field Theory waned (Back, 1992 Gold, 1992 Hendry, 1996).However, in recent years, with the work of Argyris (1990) and Hirschhorn (1988) on understanding and overcoming resistance to change, Lewins work on Field Theory has once again begun to attract interest. According to Hendry (1996), even critics of Lewins work have skeletal on Field Theory to develop their own models of change (see Pettigrew et al., 1989, 1992). Indeed, parallels have even been drawn between Lewins work and the work of complexity theorists (Kippenberger, 1998a). Back (1992), for example, argued that the formulation and behaviour of complex systems as described by Chaos and Catastrophe theorists bear striking similarities to Lewins conceptualization of Field Theory. Nevertheless, Field Theory is now probably the least understood element of Lewins work, yet, because of its potential to map the forces impinge on an individual, group or organization, it underpinned the other elements of his work.Group Dynamicsthe word dynamics . . . comes from a Grecian word meaning force . . . group . . . dynamics refers to the forces operating in groups . . . it is astudy of these forces what gives rise to them, what conditions modify them, what consequences they have, etc. (Cartwright, 1951, p. 382)Lewin was the rst psychologist to write about group dynamics and the importance of the group in pliant the behaviour of its members (Allport, 1948 Bargal et al., 1992). Indeed, Lewins (1939, p. 165) denition of a group is still generally accepted . . . it is not the similarity or dissimilarity of individuals that constitutes a group, but interdependence of fate. As Kippenberger (1998a) notes, Lewin was addressing two questions What is it about the nature and characteristics of a particular group which causes it to respond ( play) as it does to the forces which impinge on it, and how ca n these forces be changed in order to elicit a more desirable form of behaviour? It was to address these questions that Lewin began to develop the concept of Group Dynamics.Group Dynamics stresses that group behaviour, rather than that of individuals, should be the main focus of change (Bernstein, 1968 Dent and Goldberg, 1999). Lewin (1947b) maintained that it is fruitless to concentrate on changing the behaviour of individuals because the individual in isolation is constrained by group pressures to conform. Consequently, the focus of change must be at the group level and should concentrate on factors such as group norms, roles, interactions and socialization processes to create disequilibrium and change (Schein, 1988).Lewins pioneering work on Group Dynamics not only laid the foundations for our understanding of groups (Cooke, 1999 Dent and Goldberg, 1999 French and Bell, 1984 Marrow, 1969 Schein, 1988) but has also been linked to complexity theories by researchers examining self-o rganizing theory and non-linear systems (Tschacher and Brunner, 1995). However, understanding the internal dynamics of a group is not sufcient by itself to bring about change. Lewin also recognized the need to provide a process whereby the members could be industrious in and committed to changing their behaviour. This led Lewin to develop Action Research and the 3-Step model of change.Action ResearchThis term was coined by Lewin (1946) in an article entitled Action research and minority problems. Lewin stated in the articleIn the last year and a half I have had occasion to have contact with a great variety of organizations, institutions, and individuals who came for help in the eld of group relations. (Lewin, 1946, p. 201)However, though these people exhibited . . .a great amount of good-will, of readiness to face the problem squarely and . . . really do something about it . . . These eager people feel themselves to be in a blurriness. They feel in a fog on three counts 1. What is the present situation? 2. What are the dangers? 3. And most importantly of all, what shall we do? (Lewin, 1946, p. 201)Lewin conceived of Action Research as a two-pronged process which would allow groups to address these three questions. Firstly, it emphasizes that change requires action, and is directed at achieving this. Secondly, it recognizes that triple-crown action is based on analysing the situation correctly, identifying all the possible alternative solutions and choosing the one most enamor to the situation at hand (Bennett, 1983). To be successful, though, there has also to be a felt-need. FeltKurt Lewin 983 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004need is an individuals inner realization that change is necessary. If felt-need is low in the group or organization, introducing change becomes problematic. The theoretical foundations of Action Research lie in Gestalt psychology, which stresses that change can only successfully be achieved by helping individuals to reect on and gain ne w insights into the totality of their situation.Lewin (1946, p. 206) stated that Action Research . . . proceeds in a spiral of steps each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action, and fact-nding about the results of the action. It is an iterative process whereby research leads to action and action leads to evaluation and further research. As Schein (1996, p. 64) comments, it was Lewins view that . . . one cannot understand an organization without trying to change it . . . Indeed, Lewins view was very much that the understanding and learning which this process produces for the individuals and groups concerned, which then feeds into changedbehaviour, is more important than any resulting change as such (Lewin, 1946).To this end, Action Research draws on Lewins work on Field Theory to identify the forces that focus on the group to which the individual belongs. It also draws on Group Dynamics to understand why group members behave in the way they do when subjected to these fo rces. Lewin stressed that the routines and patterns of behaviour in a group are more than just the outcome of opposing forces in a forceeld. They have a value in themselves and have a positive role to play in enforcing group norms (Lewin, 1947a). Action Research stresses that for change to be effective, it must take place at the group level, and must be a participative and cooperative process which involves all of those concerned (Allport, 1948 Bargal et al., 1992 French and Bell, 1984 Lewin, 1947b).