Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory: a review and Re-evaluation

The re-emergence of field theory

In the 1990s, the apparent terminal decline of field theory was halted. This was partly because 1990 marked the 100th anniversary of Lewin’s birth, which gave rise to renewed interest in his work, including field theory. For example, the Journal of Social Issues published a special issue in 1992 enti- tled: ‘The Heritage of Kurt Lewin: Theory, Research and Practice’. This contained three articles devoted to the importance of field theory (Back 1992; Diamond 1992; Gold 1992). These sought to set the record straight as far as field theory was concerned and brought it to the attention of a generation of scholars and practitioners for whom it was a new, or only vaguely remembered, concept.

Another important reason for the renewed inter- est in field theory was work which was beginning to appear on the causes of resistance to change (Schein 1996). This showed that resistance was associated with deep-seated defensive routines within individuals and groups, and especially high- lighted the role played by perception (see Argyris 1990, 1997; Hirschhorn 1988). This renewed inter- est in field theory was promoted by long-standing supporters of Lewin such as Schein, whose own research, like Lewin’s, had shown that resistance to change was not something that could be trivialized or ignored:

The key, of course, was to see that human change, whether at the individual or group level, was a pro- found psychological dynamic process that involved

painful unlearning [and that] the stability of human behavior was based on ‘quasi-stationary equilibria’ supported by a large force field of driving and restraining forces. (Schein 1996, p. 28)

Therefore, Lewin’s work on field theory once again began to attract the attention of scholars and practi- tioners of behavioural and organizational change (Back 1992). Elsass and Veiga (1994) used field theory as a way of examining and explaining accul- turation in organizations. Similarly, in a major review of resistance to change, Dent and Goldberg (1999) drew attention to the importance of Lewin’s work in general and his field theory in particular in under- standing and managing resistance to change. Liden and Antonakis (2009) also maintain that Lewin’s field theory has been influential in developing con- tingency approaches to leadership through its stress of the importance of context. Indeed, even critics of Lewin’s work have drawn on field theory to develop their own models of change (Hendry 1996). There are also groups who continue to study topo- logical psychology, and even those who see it as the basis of cognitive psychology (Smith 1994). In addi- tion, parallels have been drawn between Lewin’s work on field theory and the work of complexity theorists, especially in terms of self-organizing systems (Kippenberger 1998; Smith and Gemmill 1991). For example, it has been argued that the for- mulation and behaviour of complex systems as described by Chaos and Catastrophe theorists bear striking similarities to Lewin’s conceptualization of field theory (Burnes 2004b).

The variant of field theory that is now in general use – usually referred to as force field analysis – has been applied to a wide range of organizational issues, including leadership (Schwering 2003), gender (Lan and Lee 1997), TQM (Thakkar et al. 2006), profes- sional boundaries in medicine (Kathan-Selck and van Offenbeek 2011) and IT implementation (Bozan 2003). However, force field analysis is not only free of any form of Lewinian topology, but is also free of much of the underlying theoretical support provided by Lewin. As Cronshaw and McCulloch (2008, p. 90) state, those who promoted force field analysis have ‘fundamentally misunderstood Lewin’s work’. If one looks at books or websites that advocate force field analysis (see for example Cummings and Worley 2005; Hannagan 2007; Huczynski and Buchanan 2009; Senior 2002; or Google ‘force field analysis’), one will be presented with something very similar to Figure 3.