Lewin's Change Model

Kurt Lewin's three-stage change model — Unfreeze (loosen current equilibrium and motivate change), Change (move to new behaviors and structures), and Refreeze (stabilize the new equilibrium so it persists) — emerged from his broader work on group dynamics and field theory at the Research Center for Group Dynamics he founded at MIT, with the canonical articulation appearing in his 1947 paper 'Frontiers in Group Dynamics' and subsequent work. The model pairs with Lewin's Force Field Analysis, which identifies the driving forces favoring change and restraining forces resisting it, with change occurring when the balance shifts. The framework is foundational to organizational development and underlies most subsequent change-management models (Kotter, ADKAR, Bridges), though scholars including Stephen Cummings and Bernard Burnes have argued that the simple 'three steps' attribution to Lewin substantially flattens his more sophisticated theoretical contribution.