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Kurt Lewin (1890-1946) is considered to be the father of social psychology and in Cartwright's words, "when the intellectual history of the twentieth century is written, Kurt Lewin will surely be counted as one of those few men whose work changed fundamentally the course of social science" (1951: 159). Lewin's contribution to social psychology in general and to the theory and practice of planned change has been well documented and described (Patnoe, 1988; Burke, 2002). Lewin's influence is everywhere in contemporary management: running meetings, work design, training, team development, systems change, leadership styles, participative methods, survey feedback methods, consultation skills, change theory and action research. In the words of Kleiner, "Nearly every sincere effort to improve organisations from within can be traced back to him, often through a thicket of tangled, hidden influences" (1996: 30).
Marrow's (1969) biography of Lewin remains the authoritative work on the subject. Lewin was born in Prussia in 1890. After his family moved to Berlin, he enrolled in the University of Berlin and began doctoral studies in psychology, an emerging offshoot of philosophy. After serving in the First World War, he returned to academia and embarked on a teaching career in Berlin. In contrast with the class-conscious academic norms of the day, Lewin was charismatic, egalitarian, accessible to his students and constantly sitting with his students in cafes and in his home engaging them in long hours of vigorous and provocative discussions of philosophy, psychology and everyday problems. His Quassiestrippe group was the best known of these informal settings and from it emerged considerable research (de Rivera, 1976).
With the rise of Nazism, Lewin knew that, as a Jew, he could not get a permanent position so he left Germany in 1933 and settled in the United States. After two years at Cornell, he held a research position at the University of Iowa. As Lewin's work became known, many of the most distinguished social psychologists of the current and next generation came to visit him: Margaret Mead, Gordon Allport, Abraham Maslow, Alvin Zander, Alec Bavelas, Ronald Lippitt, Dorian Cartwright, John French and Leon Festinger among others.
By 1944, Lewin was seeking to move beyond Iowa. Douglas McGregor invited him to MIT where he founded the Research Center for Group...