Kurt Lewin’s Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning

Few people have had as profound an impact on the theory and practice of social and organizational psychology as Kurt Lewin. Though I never knew him personally, I was fortunate during my graduate school years at Harvard’s Social Relations Department in 1949–1950 to have been exposed to Alex Bavelas and Douglas McGregor who, in my mind, embodied Lewin’s spirit totally. As I try to show in this essay, Lewin’s spirit and the assumptions that lay behind it are deeply embedded in my own work and that of many of my colleagues who practice the art of “organization development.” This essay attempts to spell out some of Lewin’s basic dictums and show their influence in my own and others’ contemporary work. I endeavor to show how my own thinking has evolved from theorizing about “planned change” to thinking about such processes more as “managed learning.”