Lewin’s Three-Stage Model of Planned Change

External and internal pressures arising from dynamically evolving business environments inevitably and continuously create unsustainable tension between the desire for stability and the need for change within organizations (Graetz & Smith, 2010). Organizations respond to these tensions by engaging in processes of strategic renewal through the implementation of “planned change” (Spector, 2010). Planned change, according to Cummings and Worley (2009), fundamentally concerns the process of changing organizational behaviors. More specifically, new behaviors must replace old ones or be adapted to or integrated with existing behaviors to enable successful change (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin, 2009; Schein, 1993, 2004). This paper outlines the three stages of Lewin’s model of planned change – unfreezing, movement, and refreezing – and discusses the importance of each relative to changing employee behaviors.

Lewin’s Three-Stage Model

Lewin’s approach to planned change (Burnes, 2004) derives from his research on the forces and dynamics governing the social behaviors of groups and individuals. Preoccupied with identifying and resolving causes of social conflict, Lewin formulated four essential elements related to the psychological dynamics of changing human behavior that, conjunctively, constitute an integrated approach for planned change (Burnes, 2004). Field theory explored the forces that influence and constrain individual behavior. Group dynamics emerged from Lewin’s belief that individual behavior was strongly influenced by group interaction. Action research, which incorporated field theory and group dynamics, embodied Lewin’s iterative learning approach for analyzing the situation to identify the possible alternatives for actionable ch...

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