Lewin's Change Management Model

Lewin's change management model, developed by social psychologist Kurt Lewin in the 1940s, describes organizational change as a three-stage process: unfreezing existing attitudes and behavior to create readiness for change, moving to a new desired state through the actual change intervention, and refreezing the new behavior and attitudes so that they become the stable norm. Lewin's model is regarded as one of the foundational frameworks in the field of organizational change management, and later, more elaborate change models are frequently presented as extensions or refinements of the basic unfreeze-change-refreeze sequence it introduced. It remains widely taught as an introductory framework for understanding the stages an organization moves through when undertaking planned change.