The Role of Alfred J. Marrow and the Harwood Manufacturing Corporation in the Advancement of OD

Introduction

Organization development (OD) has been, and arguably still is, the major approach to organizational change across the Western world, and increasingly globally (Boje, Burnes, & Hassard, 2011; Burnes, 2017b; Cummings & Worley, 2015; Piotrowski & Armstrong, 2005; Ramos & Rees, 2008; Wirtenberg, Abrams, & Ott, 2004; Wirtenberg, Lipsky, Abrams, Conway, & Slepian, 2007). Historians of OD tend to regale the reader with the names and theories of respected academics who have contributed to its creation and advancement (Dent, 2002; Freedman, 1996, 1999; Gallos, 2006). This ignores or only gives a passive role to the organizations and their managers where OD was trialed and proved effective (see W. L. French, 1982; W. L. French & Bell, 1973). The most notable exception is the Harwood Manufacturing Corporation and Alfred J. Marrow, who led it for nearly 40 years that is acknowledged as having played a vital role alongside Kurt Lewin in laying the foundations of OD between 1939 and Lewin’s death in 1947 (Burnes, 2007). However, though significant, Harwood’s contribution to OD is usually only mentioned in passing, seen as being limited to its work with Lewin and often as an addendum to Lewin’s pioneering work on organization and social change. In truth, the history of Harwood as a company and its post-Lewin contribution to OD has been largely forgotten or misunderstood (e.g., Alderfer, 1977; Beer & Walton, 1987; Burke, 1976; Cooper, 1977; Cummings & Worley, 2015; W. L. French & Bell, 1995; Gallos, 2006; Porras & Berg, 1978; Weick & Quinn, 1999).

Similarly, though Marrow ¹ played a significant role in the creation and advancement of OD, he is now chiefly remembered as Lewin’s biographer (A. J. Marrow, 1969), even by many of those active in the OD field in the 1960s and 1970s. ² This article sets out to rectify this omission by reviewing the history of Harwood and its contribution to OD, especially its work in the early 1960s when it purchased and revitalized the Weldon Manufacturing Company and demonstrated how OD’s constituent practices could be brought together to form an organization-wide approach to change, which later became seen as “classic” or “classical” OD (Bushe, 2011; Marshak & Grant, 2008; Oswick, 2009).

As will be shown, Harwood began life in the garment-trade sweatshops of New York at the end of the 19th century and ended its independent existence in the sweatshops of Honduras and Costa Rica at the end of the 20th century. However, in between, it became seen as a beacon of progressive management: The place where participative management was born and where the values, tools, and philosophy of today’s OD movement were established.

Harwood’s history is entwined with that of two remarkable men: Kurt Lewin and Alfred J. Marrow. Lewin is seen as the founder of OD and one of the major figures in 20th-century psychology (Burnes, 2017a; Schein, 1988; Tolman, 1948). Alfred J. Marrow, whose father and grandfather founded Harwood, was not just a successful businessman who pioneered progressive management but also an academic, management consultant, public servant, social campaigner, prolific public speaker, and friend of leading figures in public life, such as the U.S. vice president Hubert Humphrey (J. R. P. French, 1979; Highhouse, 2007). Above all, as his obituary stated,

. . . although Marrow appreciated the significance of Lewin’s theory, he clearly identified more strongly with Lewin’s passion for using psychology to improve the quality of life. He was first and foremost a man of action who was most successful in applying the Lewinian methods of action research to problems of managing organizations and reducing prejudices. (J. R. P. French, 1979, p. 1109)

Though this focus on action can be seen in all his activities, it was most clearly demonstrated in his work with Harwood, the company he headed for more than three decades and whose pioneering program of experiments he led during this period (A. J. Marrow, 1972b). As Dent (2002, p. 272) commented,

Although this comprehensive effort is much less well-known than the Hawthorne studies, the research which came out of it has perhaps had a greater impact on group decision-making processes, self-management, leadership development, meeting management, stereotyping and resistance to change, among others.

This article has two aims:

The article begins by examining Harwood’s origins and its move to Marion, Virginia in 1939. There follows a brief examination of Harwood’s involvement with Kurt Lewin between 1939 and 1947, which shows that the main elements of Lewin’s planned approach to change were developed and tested at Harwood in this period. The article then discusses how, after Lewin’s death, Harwood continued to develop his participative approach to management. This leads on to the main part of the article, which examines Harwood’s purchase and transformation of the Weldon Manufacturing Company. This presents how Marrow brought together and integrated key OD tools and techniques and in so doing created the template for the “classical” form of OD that came to the fore in the 1970s. The next section discusses how, through the work of Marrow and the involvement of the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan, the integrated form of OD used at Weldon become institutionalized within the OD movement. The article then charts the retirement of Marrow and the subsequent decline of Harwood as a U.S.-based manufacturer and exemplar of participative management. The article concludes that Marrow was a remarkable man and Harwood was a remarkable company, which made a significant contribution to the development and advancement of OD more than nearly 40 years.

In compiling the history of the Harwood Manufacturing Corporation, this article draws on four main sources:

Harwood: The Early Years

Harwood was a family concern founded in 1899 with a capital of $1000, partly saved and partly borrowed (A. J. Marrow, 1967b). The founders were Alfred’s father, Isidor, and his grandfather, Simon, who had emigrated from Germany in 1884. Isidor was “a self-made entrepreneur . . . a personable man and benevolent manager, he had limited technical knowledge and survived on a marginal basis in a highly competitive line of business” A. J. Marrow, 1967b, p. 24).

Harwood began life in New York, where its Head Office remained until the 1980s. New York was the center of the U.S. garment trade, an industry built on cheap, immigrant labor employed in a multitude of small factories. These were the epitome of the sweatshop: a place where employees, including children, worked for long hours in harsh and often dangerous conditions for very low wages (Bender & Greenwald, 2003; Chin, 2005; Zinn, 1980). Given the highly competitive nature of the garment industry and Harwood’s “marginal” existence, it seems likely that it started out as a sweatshop.

By the 1920s, Harwood had relocated its factory to New Bedford, Massachusetts, the location of some of the largest textile mills in the world and, as such, a plentiful and cheap source of the materials necessary for garment production (Rivard, 2002). The New Bedford industry was just as “sweated” as that of New York, which led to a number of large and bitter labor disputes in the 1920s; it also suffered severely from the Great Depression of the 1930s, which saw the industry rapidly decline (Filippelli, 1990; Georgianna & Aaronson, 1993; Zinn, 1980).

Nevertheless, Harwood was doing well enough in the early 1930s for Isidor to send his sons Alfred and Seymour to university and to build a mansion in New York. When he died in 1947, his obituary described him as a businessman, director of the Israel Zion Hospital, and someone who had long been involved in philanthropic and educational work (“Isidor L. Marrow,” 1947).

Like many such companies, in order to reduce costs, Harwood decided to move south, in its case to Marion, Virginia, where in 1939 it opened a new plant. One long-serving manager ³ suggested that it moved to get away from trade unions, which—given the past history of industrial conflicts in New Bedford—could well have been the situation. It was also the case that many progressive employers and also industrial psychologists, both of which included Marrow, saw trade unions as an obstacle to good employee relations rather than a necessary protector of labor (Desmond & Wilson, 2018; Zickar, 2004). Nevertheless, correspondence between Harwood and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America shows that their relationship was friendly, as the following extract from a letter to the Union from Isidor testifies ⁴ :

. . . we sincerely appreciate the kind and helpful cooperation we have received from Mr Herman and Mr Lavelle . . . It is just cooperation such as this kind that makes for a better and more sympathetic feeling between employers and employees . . .

The move to Marion ⁵ coincided with the growing friendship between Marrow and Kurt Lewin (Burnes, 2004). Marrow met Lewin in 1934 when he consulted Lewin about his PhD topic. By 1937, when Marrow received his doctorate, they were firm friends. Marrow was torn between a career in the family business or in academia; Lewin convinced him he could do both, pointing out that Marrow’s role at Harwood would allow him a unique position to conduct research (A. J. Marrow, 1969). As A. J. Marrow (1972a, p. 84) commented,

I decided to follow Lewin’s advice. I realized that with the power of chief executive, I could set up research programs that would provide insights into the management of people in organizations and thereby discover new ways to get people to attain their potential and work at their best.

This also suited Lewin. He was beginning to move his research from the laboratory into the real world. Though he was applying his theories to social problems, Harwood offered him the opportunity to apply them to the world of work (Burnes, 2007). In effect, Harwood would provide the evidence for his famous dictum “There is nothing so practical as a good theory” (K. Lewin, 1943/1951, p. 169).

Harwood: The Lewin Years

Lewin’s collaboration with Harwood is widely known, if not always well-understood (Cartwright & Zander, 1953; Coch & French, 1948; Dent, 2002; J. R. P. French, 1979; Highhouse, 2007). Burnes (2007) and A. J. Marrow (1969) have provided thorough accounts of this work and showed how it laid the foundation of OD. Therefore, we will summarize this period rather than covering it in detail. Lewin’s involvement with Harwood began in 1939, when he was asked to assist the company in overcoming the twin problems of low productivity and high labor turnover, which threatened to bankrupt the company. This emphasizes that Lewin’s theoretical rigor needed to deliver practical outcomes.

Lewin recruited first Alex Bavelas and later John French to assist him with this work. Both were psychologists who had worked for Lewin and both later had distinguished academic careers (House, 1993). A host of studies were undertaken between 1939 and Lewin’s death in 1947 (A. J. A. J. Marrow, 1957, 1967b, 1972c). There is no systematic record of all the studies, but the key ones concerned group decision making, self-management, leadership training, changing stereotypes, and overcoming resistance to change (Burnes, 2007). Though initiated to address particular issues as they arose, they were underpinned by and helped demonstrate the efficacy of the key elements of Lewin’s planned approach to change: field theory, action research, group dynamics and his democratic–participative change philosophy (Burnes, 2004; Dent, 2002; Highhouse, 2007; K. Lewin, 1946, 1947a, 1947b; A. J. Marrow, 1969; Mirvis, 2006).

Though the collaboration between Harwood and Lewin ended with his untimely death in 1947, it did not end Harwood’s commitment to his participative approach to managing and changing organizations. This had brought significant benefits to the company: sales had increased by 300%; productivity by 20%; there was a 50% reduction in quality problems; a 45% reduction in absenteeism; a 65% reduction in labor turnover; and workers’ participation in decision making was the norm (“Human Relations Raises Sales 300%,” 1948). In A. J. Marrow’s (1969, p. 145) words, Lewin’s “experimentation at Harwood” had a very positive effect on “practical factory needs.” It also provided strong evidence for the efficacy of Lewin’s participative approach to change, something that Marrow continued to stress for the rest of his life (J. R. P. French, 1979).

In looking at the period 1939 to 1947, it can be seen that the main elements of Lewin’s planned approach to change were developed and tested at Harwood (Burnes, 2004, 2007; J. R. P. French, 1979). Second, these self-same tools and their accompanying values went on to form the basis of the fledgling OD movement (Burnes & Cooke, 2012). The mechanisms for achieving this were threefold:

Harwood After Lewin

Lewin’s death did not lessen Harwood’s commitment to participative management. Though based in New York, Marrow received weekly reports of experiments at the Marion plant and directed their progress ⁶ . Based on Marrow’s talent for publicity, the company was regularly portrayed in the press as a forward-thinking, humane, and successful company (“Pajamas and the ego,” 1946), attracting headlines such as Human Relations Raises Sales by 300% (“Human Relations Raises Sales 300%,” 1948, p. 31).

John French left after Lewin’s death, but he was replaced as plant psychologist by Dr. Gilbert David. His remit was to continue developing participative management. For example, David conducted an experiment aimed at reducing labor turnover and absenteeism among new recruits in their first 13 weeks of employment. The result was that turnover was 6% among the experimental group, but remained around 55% for the control group, and the corresponding figures for absenteeism were 3% and 10% (A. J. Marrow, 1957). French continued to work with Harwood as a consultant and “informal member of the management team” for several decades and played a leading role in many of the subsequent change initiatives (House, 1993; A. J. Marrow, 1972b, p. 92). For example, in 1958, French led a major participative reorganization of Harwood’s Marion plants involving all 1,000 employees, which significantly improved its competitiveness and profitability.

As Harwood’s approach to participative management developed, its business flourished. In 1940, it had 200 employees; by 1950, it had 600; and by 1960, it employed around 1,000. It was also making considerable profits and using these to develop and expand its business. In 1957, it opened its first overseas plant in Puerto Rico and also took over two other businesses (A. J. Marrow, 1972b).

As for Alfred J. Marrow, it might be considered that he would be busy enough running a successful business. However, he also became a faculty member of the New School for Social Research, New York City Commissioner for Intergroup Relations, and an active management consultant. In the 1960s, while still running Harwood, he became President of the National Academy of Professional Psychologists, a trustee of the New School for Social Research, Antioch College, Gonzaga University and the NTL Institute, as well as many other posts. He also received many honors, such as the Department of State Citation of Distinguished Service and the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award (J. R. P. French, 1979; MacKinnon, 1964).

The 1960s: Harwood Acquires Weldon

By the beginning of the 1960s, Harwood was very profitable and able to purchase a major competitor—the Weldon Manufacturing Company, which like Harwood had its head office in New York. Weldon made similar products, especially pyjamas, and offered Harwood the opportunity to increase its market share significantly, especially in the “higher-priced ‘quality’ market to which Weldon sold in depth” and where profit margins were higher (S. A. Marrow, 1967, p. 5). Nevertheless, by the time of the takeover, Weldon was in deep trouble. In the 1950s, it had employed 3,500 manufacturing staff in five plants. Owing to disastrous forays into new markets, by 1961, it only employed 1,000 staff in just one factory located in Williamsport, Pennsylvania (S. A. Marrow, 1967).

Weldon was run by two owner–directors who had started the business in the 1940s. Each had their own “empire,” which they guarded zealously—one running the merchandising (design, sales, and marketing) operation based in New York and the other the manufacturing side, based in Pennsylvania. Merchandising employed some 100 clerks and administrators in New York plus a sales force that covered the country. Harwood took over the company on January 1, 1962 and intended to operate it as an independent business with the same staff and managed by the two former owner–directors, who became salaried employees (A. J. Marrow, Seashore, & Bowers, 1972; S. A. Marrow, 1967). Harwood knew that Weldon was in poor financial shape but assumed that some updating of Weldon’s manufacturing facilities and practices would overcome that. However, Harwood soon realized that the situation was far more serious than it had thought. For example, in 1962, it had a labor turnover of around 120%, which as John Nelson, Harwood’s vice president of manufacturing, commented,

[Was] one to stagger the imagination. The paperwork alone on hiring 743 people and terminating 964 others is quite a task without the consideration of the impact on training facilities, training time, supervisory and management time, quality and cost. ⁷

As Table 1 shows, in comparison with Harwood, Weldon was also in serious trouble on other key measures, especially return on investment and productivity. Morale was also much lower (Seashore & Bowers, 1970) and it was “hard to overstate the [employee] dissatisfaction at Weldon” (A. J. Marrow et al., 1972, p. 105).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Comparison of Weldon Versus Harwood Performance, 1962.

Performance	Weldon, %	Harwood, %
Return on investment	−15	17
Production efficiency	−11	6
Average earnings above minimum	None	17
Make-up pay to reach minimum	12	2
Average monthly absenteeism	6	3
Average monthly labour turnover	10	0.75

Source. Adapted from A. J. Marrow et al. (1972, p. 107).

Harwood concluded that the main problem was the management style of the two founders, which had created a dysfunctional culture (S. A. Marrow, 1967). They did not trust anyone, especially each other. They took sole responsibility for all decisions and planning: even minor items of expenditure, such as the maintenance and repair of equipment, needed their approval, which often resulted in delays to production. Their centralized-dictatorial approach had worked in the early years of Weldon, but as it grew and became more complex, their approach proved counterproductive, which is why the business rapidly contracted in the latter half of the 1950s (S. A. Marrow, 1967). There was little coordination between merchandising and production. Often, the plant did not know what orders were coming, nor did the sales staff know what problems existed within the plant. Production schedules were unreliable, workflow fluctuated wildly, and workers sometimes went from overtime to layoff in the same week. In addition, a climate of fear existed in both the New York and Pennsylvania sides of the company. If someone did something well, nothing would be said, but any mistake would bring a torrent of criticism (Smith, 1967). Predictably, most managers and staff felt that the safest course was to “do nothing at all on your own; to work only as directed; to refer all uncertainties upwards for decisions” (Smith, 1967, p. 134). The situation at Weldon was summed up by a local taxi driver who commented, “It’s a sweat shop. They work you like crazy for a couple of weeks and then throw you out” (Pearse, 1967, p. 114).

Marrow commissioned the ISR to conduct a survey of the Weldon workforce and, arising from this, to implement a major action research initiative in the company (J. R. P. French, 1979). ⁸ Given their close links, employing the ISR was an obvious choice for Marrow (Cartwright & Zander, 1953; A. J. Marrow, 1969). Though Marrow oversaw the change program, it was implemented by the ISR’s Stanley E Seashore and David G Bowers, ⁹ who were pioneers in the field of organizational behavior (Dent & Goldberg, 1999). Bowers was study director of the ISR’s Survey Research Center and Seashore was the ISR’s assistant director. Seashore had worked as a consultant before moving into academia and went on to become a leading figure in the field of industrial and organizational psychology (Kahn & Tannenbaum, 2005). Seashore was also the cousin of Edie and Charlie Seashore, both leading members of the NTL and the OD Network, and close associates of Ronald Lippitt, who had supervised Charlie’s PhD at Michigan ¹⁰ (Alderfer, 1992; Helgesen, 2006).

The Weldon action research program brought together four key elements of OD, which had previously tended to be used separately: survey feedback, a form of action research that focuses on data collection, feedback, and problem identification and solution (Nadler, 1977); Likert’s (1961) System Four classification of management styles; the participative, group dynamics approach to management and change developed at Harwood (W. L. French, 1982) and T-groups. All these emerged from Lewin’s work in the 1940s, especially his work with Marrow (Ashkanasy, 2008; Burnes & Cooke, 2012; Crosby, 2015; W. L. French, 1982; Likert, 1947).

Also, as Bowers and Seashore (1967a) observe, the sequence in which these elements were used and the changes that took place at Weldon followed K. Lewin’s (1947a, 1947b) three-step model of change:

. . . an “unfreezing” or disruption of the initial steady state, then a period of disturbance with the trail of various adaptive possibilities, and finally a period of consolidation of change with “refreezing” in a new steady state. (Bowers & Seashore, 1967a, p. 232)

In turn, the foundations of the three-step model are based on K. Lewin’s (1946) field theory, which argues that behavior is derived from the totality of coexisting and interdependent forces that impinge on a person or group and form a quasistationary equilibrium that holds this behavior in place.

Therefore, the first step that was taken was to identify the forces that were maintaining the initial steady state and unfreeze them. Using System 4, Bowers and Seashore rated Weldon as System 1—Exploitative-Authoritative and Harwood as System 4—Participative. The difference is very much akin to that between McGregor’s (1960) Theory X and Theory Y. This showed that the current sate was held in place by Weldon’s management style, which created an “ineffective and rigid ‘pattern’ or ‘system’ of relationships” that permeated all its activities (Pearse, 1967, p. 111-112). If this was to be replaced by the democratic–participative style of management, which had served Harwood so well in Marion, there would need to be widespread changes in attitudes and behavior; in effect, Weldon’s culture would have to change. This is why Harwood took a systems approach to the change: one which recognized that “all parts of a system are interdependent. A change in any one part or subsystem requires adaptive changes in other parts” (Bowers & Seashore, 1967a, p. 226). This is, of course, also consistent with Lewin’s Gestalt-based, field theory approach to change (K. Lewin, 1947a, 1947b).

For Weldon’s managers and supervisors, this meant that they needed to change the way they interacted with each other and the rest of the workforce in order “to spread responsibility and influence downward in the organization so that each worker could have some significant part in the management of their own work and in the work of those associated with him” (A. J. Marrow et al., 1972, p. 109). There would also have to be complementary changes to structures and technology to encourage and reinforce (refreeze) behavioral change.

As Bowers and Seashore (1967c) noted, Harwood’s aims in adopting this approach to running Weldon were not altruistic; it was seen as the most effective way of achieving the following:

In addition to the ISR team, three other groups of consultants were involved. One was a team of behavioral scientists whose role was to do the following:

. . . guide the change in leadership style, strive to increase managerial competence, improve interpersonal relations, train supervisors and executives in the principles of participative management, and serve as instructors in human relations for the entire staff. (A. J. Marrow et al., 1972, p. 104)

The other teams comprised two groups of engineers whose role was to modernize the manufacturing process at Weldon. All three teams worked closely together to transform Weldon. Initially, most visible progress was made with the organizational and technical changes. Work on the shop floor was reorganized into semiautonomous production departments, operator training was improved and a training center established. Off the shop floor, the engineering function was strengthened and a personnel manager was appointed (Bowers & Seashore, 1967c).

However, the main improvements were expected from the move to plant-wide participative management, which was the responsibility of the ISR and the behavioral scientists. Their approach was based on the OD philosophy, tools, and techniques that had grown out of Lewin’s work at Harwood in the 1940s (Burnes, 2004): action research, joint problem-solving groups, group dynamics, teambuilding, and a series of extended T-group “confrontation meetings” (A. J. Marrow et al., 1972). The purpose of such meetings is to “sensitize” individuals and groups to their own behavior and emotions and how these affect the behavior and emotions of others (Highhouse, 2002). Though the indiscriminate use of the T-group approach led to its fall from grace in the 1970s, the “in-company” or “family” manifestation used at Weldon was seen to be effective and is still used today (Burnes & Cooke, 2012; Crosby, 2013, 2015).

The behavior change program was conducted in three overlapping phases, beginning with managers, moving on to supervisors and finishing with shop floor workers. The “family” groups comprised people who normally worked together and whose behavior had a significant impact on each other’s performance. The change program began by putting these family groups through a series of 2- to 4-day “confrontation meetings.” Before these commenced, there were extensive staff briefings and the members of the family groups were individually interviewed before and after each session.

At the Weldon plant, the first “family” group comprised the six top managers. These top managers, whose relationships with each other had previously been fractious, described their family group meetings as “deeply moving” and as allowing them to reassess a “lifetime of values and beliefs” and giving them a “new feeling of confidence in dealing with each other, and greater awareness of their impact on each other” (A. J. Marrow et al., 1972, p. 113). Encouraged by the visible changes in managers’ behavior, the consultants then turned their attention to supervisors and workers.

Supervisors were not particularly effective. There were serious difficulties in all parts of the plant with many unresolved work problems, especially in terms of employee motivation. Supervisors were seen as having a key role to play in addressing these issues by creating the same sort of a participative ethos that was being developed with managers. This was to be driven by two central ideas. The first was that supervisors needed to see their role as different from the past; in particular, they would have to reconsider their work relationships. Second, changes to shop floor working practices and organization would have to be initiated, or at least endorsed, by the supervisors and their teams through joint problem-solving efforts (Pearse, 1967).

The main changes for managers and supervisors revolved around the development of their interpersonal skills, but for shop floor workers, the changes were more extensive. As well as enabling their involvement in decision making and developing their interpersonal skills, the workers’ job skills and motivation needed to be improved (Bowers & Seashore, 1967c). Involving them in joint problem-solving groups with supervisors appeared to have the most positive effect on shop floor workers’ productivity, morale, and their relations with supervisors (Pearse, 1967).

The OD approach was much less successful in the New York office. Several of the more able managers had already left before the takeover. The former owner responsible for merchandising left after attending just one T-group session. His son and son-in-law followed shortly afterwards. This left merchandising without any real leadership or technical ability and Harwood had no alternative but to rebuild it from scratch (Bowers & Seashore, 1967a; A. J. Marrow et al., 1972).

Given the scale of the changes at Weldon, the improvement process was slow. By the middle of 1962, productivity was actually falling. This put the managers under an enormous strain, especially as they saw subordinates struggling with delegated tasks, which they could have done much more easily themselves (Bowers & Seashore, 1967c). It was 1963 before progress began to be made, but by the end of that year, Weldon’s performance was approaching that of the Marion plants. ¹¹ In 1964, the ISR reported that managers, supervisors and workers were operating on a much more participative basis: Weldon had moved from a System 1—Exploitative-Authoritative form of management to a System 3—Consultative form (Seashore & Bowers, 1970). As Table 2 shows, there had also been a remarkable improvement in Weldon’s profit and productivity rates. In addition, product defects were reduced by 37% and customer returns by 57% (A. J. Marrow et al., 1972).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2.

Comparison of Weldon Versus Harwood Performance, 1964.

Performance	Weldon, %	Harwood, %
Return on investment	17	21
Production efficiency	14	16
Average earnings above minimum	14	16
Make-up pay to reach minimum	4	2
Average monthly absenteeism	3	3
Average monthly labour turnover	4	0.75

Source. Adapted from A. J. Marrow et al. (1972, p. 116).

For A. J. Marrow (1964, p. 20), Weldon demonstrated that it was possible to “please the profit conscious executive without neglecting the humanization of managerial skills or employee satisfaction.” Symbolic of the new relationship between workers and management, the company amicably agreed to union recognition, something the old management had bitterly resisted for over two decades (Bowers & Seashore, 1967b; Kornbluh, 1967).

By 1964, the Lewinian process of unfreezing and moving at Weldon had created a very different organization, but this had taken 2 years and an enormous level of support, which once removed could have led to a return to old ways. However, this did not happen and a refreezing of the new behavior seemed to have occurred. A comparison of the performance of all the Harwood companies against a similar group of companies carried out in late 1965 showed that Harwood’s profit after tax was 125% greater than the comparator group. ¹² In 1969, Seashore and Bowers returned to “bring the Weldon story up-to-date.” ¹³ They found that workers’ satisfaction with the company and their own jobs had continued to increase, as had profitability, and the organization was more participative than in 1964 (Seashore & Bowers, 1970).

Likert (1967) described the events at Weldon as “an extraordinarily successful improvement of a failing organization” (p. ix). Harwood’s attempt to export its participative culture to Weldon had worked remarkably well. Bowers and Seashore (1967a, p. 233) put this down to the “unusual scope and coherence in the program of change,” which embraced both technical–structural and behavioral–participative elements. The “scope and coherence” of the Weldon initiative stands in sharp contrast with Harwood’s more piecemeal approach in the 1940s. Though there was a commitment to developing a participative approach, there was no overall understanding or plan of what would be required or existing tools, techniques, or experienced change agents. All these had to be developed. Indeed, it was 1944 before Marrow proposed that there was a need “to involve everyone in the plant, not just a small experimental group.” ¹⁴ Only in retrospect is it possible to see that as well as creating a participative culture at Harwood, Lewin and Marrow were also testing and establishing the key elements of what would become OD (Burnes, 2007).

At Weldon, from the start, there was an understanding of what was required, a plan for achieving it, a set of developed tools and techniques to draw on and experienced practitioners to utilize them. This was a time when T-groups were dominating OD, and Lewin’s wider and more coherent, three-step approach to change was in danger of being lost (Burnes & Cooke, 2012; Porras & Bradford, 2004). Marrow demonstrated the range of OD tools and techniques, including T-groups, and how these could be used in a coherent fashion to transform an organization by, to quote the title of one of his books, Making Management Human (A. J. Marrow, 1957). Perhaps not surprisingly, A. J. Marrow, Bowers, and Seashore’s (1967) Weldon book was described as “the best report of action research in organizational psychology to appear up to that time” (J. R. P. French, 1979, p. 1110).

Weldon’s Contribution to OD

Harwood’s Weldon initiative showed how the separate elements of OD could be integrated into a coherent approach for improving organizational effectiveness. There were a number of other major OD initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s, but these tended to be led by ad hoc groups or small consultancies and did not have Weldon’s influence on the future trajectory of OD (Burke, 2011a, 2011b; W. L. French, 1982). Weldon’s influence arose from four factors. The first was Marrow’s evangelical zeal in promoting the practical benefits of Lewinian participative management as exemplified by Harwood and Weldon. Marrow moved seamlessly though the worlds of business, academia, and public service, and in each of these he wore his practitioner clothes with pride, continually trumpeting the benefits of the Harwood approach (J. R. P. French, 1979; MacKinnon, 1964; A. J. Marrow, 1964). He was a leading figure in practitioner organizations, such as the National Academy of Professional Psychologists, a high-profile management consultant (A. J. Marrow, 1974) and a business leader ready to show other managers what Harwood had achieved. ¹⁵ The publication of A. J. Marrow’s (1969) biography of Lewin further enhanced his standing. This all meant that the benefits of the Harwood–Weldon approach were widely disseminated among managers and OD consultants (Burke, 2011b; J. R. P. French, 1979; MacKinnon, 1964). As Professor Jack Sherwood, a leading OD academic and consultant in the 1960s stated, “Marrow’s work was well-known and well-regarded. I remember it as the first real world evidence for meaningful organizational change.” ¹⁶

The second influential factor was the publications that arose from the Weldon experience. Foremost among these was Management by Participation (A. J. Marrow et al., 1967), which was aimed at influencing practice and practitioners. This can be seen from its “Preface”:

. . . this book is written, first, for an alert and literate management, men who seek to broaden their understanding of the problems created by technical and social change, and who need to get some ideas about what one can do—concretely—about planned change. (A. J. Marrow et al., 1967, p. xvi)

The third factor that ensured that the Weldon approach was promoted and replicated was the work of Stanley Seashore, who was a prominent organizational psychologist. ¹⁷ He was president of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), where he played a leading role in the transition of industrial psychology from its focus on individual behavior to a more “system-oriented” approach (Kahn & Tannenbaum, 2005). Seashore attached great importance to his collaboration with Marrow, ¹⁸ one indication of which is that he devoted his 1969 SIOP Presidential address to the Weldon initiative (Seashore & Bowers, 1970). Weldon created the template for his own OD practice, which he inculcated in the ISR. ¹⁹ For example, the Michigan Doctoral Program in organizational psychology, which he ran, was built on the Weldon work, ²⁰ and many of its graduates went on to become OD practitioners. ²¹ In the 1960s and 1970s, he conducted over 30 major change programs (Seashore, 1978), including in Esso Europe in the mid-1960s where, as the eminent social scientist Lisl Klein noted, he practiced “classic” OD, which was a decade before it became common in the rest of the OD community (Klein, 2005). His links to the wider OD field were also facilitated by his close connections with Edie and Charlie Seashore, his cousins and themselves leading figures in OD (Alderfer, 1992; Helgesen, 2006).

The last factor was the ISR itself. The various groups and individuals that made up the ISR were from its outset infused with Lewinian values and practices developed at Harwood and elsewhere, which formed the basis of OD (W. L. French, 1982; A. J. Marrow, 1969). What the Weldon experience demonstrated was how these could be brought together, rather than used separately. In turn, what the ISR did was to formalize, further develop and promote the integrated approach used at Weldon so that it could be replicated and passed on to current and future generations of students, staff and practitioners, and through them to the wider OD movement.

These four factors came together in the late 1960s just at the point when OD was going through a major crisis brought about by the growing disenchantment with the ability of T-groups to improve organizational effectiveness (Burke, 1976; Campbell & Dunnette, 1968; Highhouse, 2002; Joure, Frye, Green, & Cassens, 1971; Kleiner, 1996). At the time, OD was split into three groupings: the West Coast T-groupers driven by “utopian aspirations” to improve people rather than developing organizations; the East Coast T-groupers led by the NTL, which also had a wider social agenda based on democratizing society but who were more organization-orientated; and a smaller, more fragmented third group of consultants and academics, including the ISR, who focused on improving organizational effectiveness through action research, group dynamics and survey feedback ²² (Freedman, 1999; W. L. French, 1982; Mirvis, 2006; Schein, 1995).

With the collapse of T-groups, the West Coast group disappeared and the East Coast group fragmented, with many of its members moving into team-building activities based on group dynamics. ²³ The third group, whose livelihood depended on selling OD services to organizations, became the dominant force in OD, and the ISR was its biggest and most well-respected member (Burke, 1976; Burnes & Cooke, 2012; Greiner, 1972). OD had originated with and tended to be dominated by academics, but in the late 1960s this began to change (Burnes & Cooke, 2012). The increasing influence on OD of clients and practitioners can be judged by the growth of the OD Network, which is now the leading international body for OD professionals. It was founded in the United States in 1964 as the Industrial Trainers Network with 28 members. By 1967, there were just under 50 members, but by 1975, this rose to 1,400 (Coruzzi, 1995). The membership comprised a mix of external and internal consultants, the latter reflecting the drive by HR departments in the early 1970s to become the center of change expertise in their organisations. ²⁴

Therefore, when the T-group wing of OD collapsed and clients and practitioners were looking for a more reliable method of improving organizational effectiveness, it is not surprising that they should look to the ISR, which offered a proven approach to change based on the Weldon experience. ²⁵

Nevertheless, as this broader approach to OD began to take root, there was a clash of philosophies between those who still sought to promote the democratic–humanist ideals espoused by Lewin and embodied in the T-group movement, and the more managerial, results-orientated form of OD promoted by the rapidly expanding number of practitioners and demanded by their clients (Mirvis, 1988, 1990). Also, as U.S. businesses faced increasing foreign competition in the 1970s and 1980s, there were increasing calls for more rapid and organization-wide approaches to change (Peters & Waterman, 1982).

Though the tensions between the academic wing of OD and the practitioner wing had always been present, the balance of forces moved decisively, in the 1970s and 1980s, in favor of the latter (Burnes & Cooke, 2012; Woodman, 2014). As the number of OD practitioners increased and the demand for standardized products grew, especially ones aimed at transformational change, some of the key elements of classic OD began to be watered down, especially field theory and OD’s democratic–humanist values (Burnes & Cooke, 2013; W. L. French & Bell, 1995; Mirvis, 1988, 1990). Though some of the newer OD approaches, such as Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987) and Future Search (Weisbord & Janoff, 2010), emphasized participation, the lack of understanding and use of field theory led many to question the utility and sophistication Lewin’s three step model, associating it mainly with action research (Bartunek & Woodman, 2015; Burnes, 2004).

In part, this led some in the OD field to experience a crisis of confidence and question whether or not it could or should continue, given the changing nature and demands of organizations (D. L. Bradford & Burke, 2004; Greiner & Cummings, 2004; Worley & Feyerherm, 2003). One of the curious things about the debate over the future of OD was how little it considered or seemed to understand OD’s past (Burnes & Cooke, 2012). A better appreciation of the origins and purpose of Lewin’s three-step model, especially its basis in child psychology and its application to resolving social conflict, might have indicated its continuing utility (G. W. Lewin, 1948; K. Lewin, 1936, 1946, 1947a, 1947b; A. J. Marrow, 1969). Just as important, an understanding of the Weldon experience would have demonstrated how applying the three-step model as Lewin intended, that is, an action research methodology based on field theory and utilizing a genuinely participative approach, could lead to enduring transformational change (A. J. Marrow et al., 1967). Marrow was not a philanthropist when it came to business. His aim at Weldon was to turn around a failing organization and make it profitable. However, in so doing, he showed that when applied knowledgeably and diligently, Lewin’s methods could transform an organization not only in terms of its performance and management–worker relations but also its very culture. Given that, this is what the U.S. organizations were calling for in the 1980s and 1990s, and OD practitioners were struggling to offer, it can be seen that OD’s forgetfulness regarding its own history was a significant missed opportunity.

What does this mean for today and the challenges faced not just by organizations but also society at large? Field theory was Lewin’s metatheory, that is, the theory on which all his work is built, especially his three-step model (Adelman, 1993; Allport, 1948; Bargal, 2006; Deutsch, 1968). Even in leading OD textbooks, field theory now appears only in a diluted form (see Cummings & Worley, 2015; W. L. French & Bell, 1999). In effect, what we now have is an impoverished version of Lewin’s three-step model, which mainly focuses on action research (Bartunek & Woodman, 2015). Yet action research, without the underpinnings of field theory, has a reduced ability to identity, unfreeze and refreeze the forces that bring about and can resolve conflict. Social and organizational conflict has not gone away since Lewin’s death. Indeed, given the environmental crisis facing the world, we now have significant conflict between People, Planet, and Profit (Cowley, McLaughlin, & Servey, 2017; Stachowicz-Stanusch, 2017; United Nations, 2015). Lewin’s original purpose in developing his change methodologies was to resolve social conflict; at Harwood, Marrow showed how they could also be used to address industrial conflict. As Burnes and Cooke (2012, 2013) argue, used as Lewin originally intended, that is, as three-step approach based on field theory, it may well have an important role to play in resolving environmental conflicts between society and organizations.

Harwood: The Decline and Fall

By 1970, Harwood was one of the biggest and most profitable garment producers in the United States, employing over 3,000 staff and operating in seven plants, three in Marion, the Weldon plant in Pennsylvania and three in Puerto Rico; it would later also open factories in Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica (A. J. Marrow, 1972a). Business was booming, and it was producing some nine million pairs of pyjamas a year, along with its other products such as underwear and casual clothing (“Harwood Has It Rough,” 1987). The company, which in 1937 had opened a small textile factory in rural Virginia, had become a major player in the U.S. garment industry, becoming a key supplier to companies such as JC Penney, which in 1971 had over 2,000 stores and a turnover of $5bn (FundingUniverse, 2014).

The U.S. recession of 1973 to 1975 began to change all this. The rise in oil prices, inflation, and unemployment, allied to new technologies and increasing global competition, had a dramatic and detrimental effect on the U.S. economy, especially its manufacturing base (Katz, Kochan, & Keefe, 1987; Revenga, 1992). It was most severe in low-skill, low-wage industries such as garment production where prices were being undercut by companies manufacturing in countries with far lower labor costs (Bernard, Jensen, & Schott, 2006; Sachs, Shatz, Deardorff, & Hall, 1994). Harwood was caught in the double bind of falling demand, which increased their costs and increased foreign competition from lower cost producers. Its main customers reduced the size of their orders and demanded Harwood cut its prices. As Wendell Watkins, a Harwood vice president, later commented,

We have always manufactured private-label goods for big firms (department stores) who can shop the world and get the best price they can. . . . Our major customers always insist on having the lowest price. They tell us “We’ll bring it in from the Orient if you can’t do something to match the cost.” (quoted in Bartlett & Steele, 1996, p. 3)

Nevertheless, Harwood made near $1m annual profits for much of the 1970s, but this was on a turnover of $60m to $70m. ²⁶ Thus, its profitability, which had been over 5% after tax in the 1960s, fell to around 1% to 2% in the 1970s. ²⁷ Even worse, by the end of the decade it was in serious financial trouble, losing over $2m in 1979 and $5m in 1980. This led to the restructuring of the company, which involved the sale of its women’s wear and knitwear divisions for a combined total of just over $7m. This cut turnover by half but did eliminate its losses. ²⁸ The cutbacks also involved the closure of the Weldon plant (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1979).

The 1970s also saw the gradual withdrawal of the Marrows from the business. In 1976, at the age of 71 years, Marrow stepped down as president of Harwood and his brother Seymour, who was then 63 years, took over the role. In March 1978, Alfred died. In 1981, Michael Rothbaum took over from Seymour as president of the company and in 1983 he bought it from the Marrow family for approximately $2m, thus ending their involvement (Sloan, 1981). ²⁹ Rothbaum had joined Harwood in 1967 as financial vice president and became executive vice president in 1976, when Alfred stepped down from the company. Seymour died in 1986.

Under Rothbaum, Harwood expanded its overseas production activities in order to reduce its costs, especially its wage bill. For example, in 1980, it was one of the first U.S. companies to build a plant in Honduras, the attraction being its low wages, lax labor laws, and zero-tax regime (Bartlett & Steele, 1996). As Wendell Watkins, a Harwood executive, commented, it was the cheap labor that attracted Harwood: “It’s the only benefit. And you do it only so you can compete, not because you want to” (quoted in Bartlett & Steele, 1996).

The company did not give up on the U.S. manufacturing, but it did bring in new managers with a more authoritarian style, and existing managers were “rooted out.” As two ex-workers commented,

Well everybody hated [the new manager], I tell you that right now, they had no use for him, he was awful . . . He was a terrible manager so he just rooted out [an existing Harwood Manager] and we didn’t like that, you know, then he had this horrible woman up there in Pennsylvania and she just rooted out [a manager who had worked at Marion]. ³⁰

[Another existing manager who had worked at Harwood since 1953] was a good man too but they, the people they put in over him, he come in here and they really done him dirty, they done everyone dirty. ³¹

Under the new management, the worker participation championed by Marrow died out. One ex-supervisor, who had been at Harwood since 1948, stated that in the 1980s, production methods and times were determined by her through time and motion studies and without consulting the workers concerned. ³²

Harwood concentrated U.S. production in Marion and acquired new customers, such as Nike, Reebok, and Hang Ten (Sloan, 1981), but it could not hold on to these without moving the work to its low-cost overseas factories, which meant less work for Marion. The plight of these plants was epitomized by pyjama production, which had been the mainstay of the Marion factories since Harwood first moved there in 1937. From the nine million pairs, Marion was making per year in the early 1970s, production fell to 360,000 pairs by 1986 (“Harwood Has It Rough,” 1987). With no replacement business for the Marion plants, their days were numbered.

Harwood tried to automate some production processes to cut costs (Mullins, 1986), but as Evelyn Dempsey, a machinist who joined the company in 1948, commented, “The automated system was the last thing they did. They said they’d try it and if it didn’t work, they’d go out [of business]. I reckon it didn’t work” (Simmons, 1997, pp. A1-A3).

In 1986 and 1987, two of its three Marion plants (Holston and Abingdon) were closed, with a combined loss of 350 jobs. This just left Harwood with one Marion factory, which had a much diminished order book (“Harwood Has It Rough,” 1987). On October 31, 1992, this plant also closed, with the company’s products now being made in Honduras and Costa Rica. At its height, Harwood had 3,000 U.S.-based staff; by the end, it only employed 120 in Marion. Most of the work had been moved offshore, where labor costs were 48 cents per hour as averse to the $9 paid to the Marion workers (Bartlett & Steele, 1996). As Bob Nelson, a former Harwood vice president for manufacturing commented, “If J. C. Penney [Harwood’s biggest customer] can buy the same garment with the same quality for cheaper, they will—just like you and me” (Simmons, 1997, p. A3).

The closure of the last Marion plant saw the end of what one long-serving manager called:

. . . a unique company . . . and I was always proud of that and I didn’t want to lose, never did want to lose it . . . we wanted to leave a better company than we came to work for and I swear we would have done that. We ended up closing, you don’t know how hard that is, but . . . we had a dang good company going, we did, and it was from the top to the bottom. ³³

The first of its overseas plants, opened in the 1950s, adopted Harwood’s enlightened management philosophy and the “manager there had actively encouraged employees to participate” (A. J. Marrow et al., 1972, p. 109) ³⁴ . However, in the changed competitive environment of the 1980s, and under Rothbaum’s management, Harwood appeared to become a typical “maquila’ ³⁵ company, operating in the Caribbean and Central American Free Trade Zones where wages were very low (as little as 30 cents per hour), taxes zero, labor laws weak, and unions aggressively discouraged: something of a throwback to the U.S. sweatshops of the 19th century (Emmelhainz & Adams, 1999; Moure-Eraso, Wilcox, Punnett, MacDonald, & Levenstein, 1997; Over, 1999; Sklair, 1989). In addition, as Over (1999) observed, Harwood and other companies would not expect to be subject to local labor laws, such as those governing minimum wages, social security and medical insurance, health and safety, and trade union rights.

By moving its manufacturing overseas, Harwood managed to retain its position as one of the United States’s leading garment manufacturers. Indeed, when it was sold to the Sara Lee Corporation in 1996, it had a turnover of $55m and was said to be the largest manufacturer of men’s underwear in the world. ³⁶ Though this marked the end of Harwood, its role as the exemplar of Alfred J. Marrow and Kurt Lewin’s approach to industrial democracy had ended much earlier, when the Marrow family sold the company to Rothbaum.

With very little published or archive material about Harwood in this period, one is left with the recollection of ex-workers. As one might expect, there was some bitterness toward the company, with workers feeling “betrayed” when it moved jobs off-shore. ³⁷ However, former Marion workers seemed very positive about their time at Harwood under the Marrows:

. . . the Marrows were good folk. ³⁸

Everyone got along well—managers and workers. ³⁹

Well it was just a good place to work and good management. They’d treat you nice, be good to you. ⁴⁰

[Alfred] walked through the plant and looked at everything and talked to people if they had questions. He was a good person. Everybody liked him. [Seymour] was just one of us more. He was in and out a lot. But they both came and their wives both came [to the Christmas parties]. [I] was treated fairly and it was a good company to work for. ⁴¹

Conclusion: A Lasting Contribution

As we have shown, Harwood and its President Alfred J. Marrow played a crucial role in the creation and advancement of OD. For over three decades, Harwood embodied and promoted the participative values and approaches on which OD was built (Burnes 2004, 2007; Burnes & Cooke, 2012). This work was led by Marrow, who was a prominent figure in the OD movement in the 1950s and 1960s ⁴² (J. R. P. French, 1979). He was the driving force and embodiment of the participative spirit with which he and Lewin imbued Harwood. After Lewin’s death, Marrow continued his work in Harwood and promoted and developed it outside.

When Marrow left the company, it changed dramatically and not for the better as far as the workforce were concerned, which is not unusual when dominant figures depart an organization (Collins, 2009; Witzel, 2003). Nor should one see Harwood under Marrow as some sort of workers’ paradise or Marrow as an altruist. Indeed, as A. J. Marrow (1969, p. 145) commented, “Experimentation at Harwood had to be subordinate to practical factory needs.” The company had to make a profit to survive, which is why Lewin was originally brought in. The high labor turnover and the consequent need to change its management style to address this indicated that life at Harwood, at least in the early 1940s, was not an unalloyed pleasure for workers (A. J. Marrow, 1969). In addition, despite its good relations with trade union officials before its move to Marion, and despite its later acceptance of unionization at Weldon, Harwood resisted the unionization of its Marion plant until it appears to have been forced to accept it in 1946 (Desmond & Wilson, 2018; Gomberg, 1966; A. J. Marrow, 1966).

Nevertheless, Harwood under Marrow was a remarkable company, which in the 1940s and again in the 1960s made very important contributions to the creation and advancement of OD. In the 1940s, Harwood was the real world “laboratory” in which Lewin developed and tested his democratic–humanistic approach to managing and changing organizations (Burnes, 2007). Along with Marrow, Bavelas, and French, Lewin created change tools that addressed “practical factory needs” (A. J. Marrow, 1969, p. 145) and demonstrated, in the words of his famous dictum, that: “There is nothing so practical as a good theory” (K. Lewin, 1943/1951, p. 169).

In the 1960s, Harwood’s Weldon initiative showed how the methods, techniques, and approaches of the emerging OD movement could be brought together to effect organization-wide behavioral/cultural change and performance improvement. This was particularly important for the future of OD for three main reasons:

The influence of the Harwood work can be judged by the fact that by the late 1970s, the tools, values, and system-wide approach developed there in the 1940s and 1960s had become accepted as the norm by OD practitioners (Burnes & Cooke, 2012; Bushe, 2011; Gallos, 2006). Nevertheless, though Marrow was a talented publicist for OD in general and Lewin’s work in particular, it is difficult to see how he alone could have brought about this institutionalization of what was created and practiced at Harwood. Though catalysts like Marrow can highlight and exemplify new ideas and values, a wider range of actors is required to adopt, develop, legitimize, and pass them on (Austin & Bartunek, 2006; Furusten, 2013).

After Lewin’s death, these actors included those who had worked with Lewin at Harwood, such as Bavelas and French but also many others who were associated with him, such as Kenneth Benne, Leland Bradford, and Ronald Lippitt, who with Lewin founded the NTL and led the T-group explosion of the 1950 and 1960s (L. P. Bradford, 1967, 1974; Freedman, 1996, 1999). Lippitt also played a key role in the development of group dynamics at the ISR where other key friends and associates of Lewin, especially Rensis Likert, the ISR’s first director, and Dorwin Cartwright, the RCGD’s first director at Michigan, were based (A. J. Marrow, 1969). Nor must it be forgotten that Marrow had helped to establish and fund the RCGD and that John French, one of its senior figures, was a long-standing Harwood collaborator (A. J. Marrow, 1972b).

In the 1970s, clients and practitioners were demanding a more results-orientated OD, which is what the ISR offered. Its growing international reputation, commitment to finding practical solutions to the problems of both industry and society, its extensive resources and experience, and its links with Marrow and Harwood made it the most prominent body in OD ⁴³ (Frantilla, 1998; A. J. Marrow, 1969). It is not, therefore, surprising that in the 1970s, with the decline of the NTL, it was the ISR that took over as de facto leaders of the OD movement ⁴⁴ (Dale, 1970; Frantilla, 1998). Unfortunately, such was the expansion of OD practitioner numbers and the demand for OD services, that some key elements of Lewin’s work were lost or misunderstood, especially field theory. Yet that was not the case outside the industrial sphere (Burnes, 2017a). Indeed, such has been the wider influence of Lewin’s work that the Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman (2013, p. ix), a leading figure in the field of behavioral economics, commented that

The recognition of the huge power of situation, context, priming, and construal is common ground. We are all Lewinians now, and in the context of policy behavioural economists are Lewinian as well.

Marrow and Harwood played an important role in developing and promoting Lewin’s work in the organizational sphere. Marrow was instrumental in funding and establishing the ISR and involving it in Harwood and Weldon. By these and other actions, he ensured that the fundamentals of OD that were developed in Harwood and Weldon did not die with him or the company he led. Instead, the knowledge became institutionalized in and through the ISR and its staff and students and made available through them to the wider OD movement, even if the importance elements has been forgotten. Therefore, what we can see is that that Marrow was a remarkable man, that Harwood was a remarkable company, and that their contribution to OD was significant and should be recognized as such.