1. Lewinian Limits: A Foucauldian Analysis of Kurt Lewin’s Representation in Change Management
Stephen Cummings, Victoria University of Wellington
Todd Bridgman, Victoria University of Wellington
Kenneth G. Brown, University of Iowa
Presentation to Paper Session ‘The Theories and Histories of Critique’, Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Orlando, 13 August 2013

2. Change as Three Steps (CATS)
unfreeze
move
refreeze

3. Method: Foucault’s Critical Historical Approaches
Our question: ‘why do management texts present Lewin as they do?
Early works
Progressive histories may conceal the truth
Archaeology
Every strata promotes its own particular truths
Genealogy
The truth is developed and maintained by an expedient network of relations

4. Early works: How retrospective views conceal the truth about Lewin
Lewin was not a management and organization theorist
Lewin’s supposedly seminal work makes almost no mention of CATS
CATS was not a significant part of Lewin’s work.
Lewin did not use the term ‘refreezing’ so often attributed to him
Lewin’s thinking was not simplistic, episodic or linear

5. Archaeology
The problem of the decline of American industry and McKinsey & Co.
The problem of relevance
The problem with Organizational Development
The problem of the academic rigor and origins of Change Management

6. Genealogy Mention of CATS in Organization Development (French & Bell)
Ist edition (1973): No mention
2nd edition (1978): No mention
3rd edition (1983): No mention
4th edition (1990): Brief mention
5th edition (1995): “Kurt Lewin introduced two ideas about change that have been very influential since the 1940s” (p.81)

7. Conclusion
The history of Change Management is both questionable and malleable, so the future need not be bound by unquestioned historical foundations
Change Management could be different if it was based on what Lewin actually researched