Frontiers in Group Dynamics

Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in Group Dynamics: Concept, Method and Reality in Social Science; Social Equilibria and Social Change. Human Relations, 1(1), 5-41.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1947

Volume

1

Issue

1

Pages

5-41

DOI

10.1177/001872674700100103

DOI registrant

SAGE Publications

Link

https://doi.org/10.1177/001872674700100103

Cited from

chemistry_materials, mathematics, organizational_management, physics

Cited by

8 citations across 8 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Activation Energy
  • Organizational change: Breaking organizational inertia (Lewin's (1947) unfreezing phase), leadership buy-in as energy input, critical-mass adoption thresholds, overcoming change resistance.

    This sourceDevelops the unfreeze–move–refreeze model of change in quasi-stationary social equilibria. SUPPORTS the 'Lewin's unfreezing phase' organizational-change example.

• Annealing
  • The materials-to-organisations transfer is more metaphor-prone, but the failure-mode signature transfers structurally: a change effort that relaxes structure briefly and then snaps it back exhibits exactly the defect-trapping behaviour of a metallurgical quench, producing the worst of both worlds.
• Resistance to Change
  • The status-quo equilibrium embedding existing processes, relationships, expertise, identity, and psychological security
• Signal Decay and Fadeout
  • Political and organizational influence: Temporal decay of policy effects as institutional structures and personnel shift; leadership directives decay in force when not actively reinforced (a mandate issued from the top decays toward prior norms in middle management and frontline operations), a phenomenon Lewin (1947) framed as the tendency of social systems to revert toward quasi-stationary equilibrium absent sustained driving forces.
• Transformation
  • This conceptual tool separates the rule (what defines the transformation—e.g., "apply this matrix," "follow this chemical pathway," "follow this organizational redesign process") from the outcome (the result of applying the rule), an analytical separation Lewin (1947) operationalized in his "unfreeze–change–refreeze" model of planned change in human systems.

Domain-specific

• Sonata Form
  • Beyond the home domain the honest verdict is (A) metaphor: the cross-domain extensions are real and common but borrow the shape and drop the mechanism. The exposition–development–recapitulation arc recurs all over — classical rhetoric's partitio–confirmatio–recapitulatio, narrative three-act structure (setup–confrontation–resolution) and the hero's journey (departure–initiation–return), organisational change (Lewin's unfreeze–change–refreeze)

    This sourceLewin's 'Frontiers in Group Dynamics', whose section 'Changing as Three Steps' gives unfreezing, moving and freezing of group standards.

    Supported in partVerified against a saved copy of the source

    “Changing as Three Steps: {{{Unfreezing}}}, Moving, and Freezing of Group Standards”

    Read by an automated reader; not a human review. How support was checked

Mechanisms

• Destabilization Depth and Breadth Monitor
  • A mid-size company is unfreezing a rigid regional-approval norm so it can be rewritten during a reorganization — a deliberate Lewin-style unfreeze of something that had hardened over a decade.

    This sourceProvides the social-equilibrium and change framework from which Lewin-style unfreezing of an established norm is derived.

• Selective Re-stabilization Challenge
  • A manufacturer reopened rigid team norms to install a new near-miss safety-reporting process — an unfreeze, a change, and then a deliberate refreeze.

    This sourceLewin describes planned change as unfreezing an existing level, moving to a new level, and refreezing at that level.

Verification

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Registry ID ref:7cdb31113d67 · see in the full table