Dr Olga Cretu

Lecturer in Business and Management

Dr Olga Cretu is a Lecturer in HR and OB in the School of Management at Coventry University London since May 2020. She previously held teaching positions at Westminster and Middlesex University Business School where she completed her PhD. Over the past three years, she has been teaching UG modules in HR and Organisational Behaviour as well as PG modules in Global HRM Strategies and Research Methods. Furthermore, Olga has been leading various UG and PG modules, such as Developing Business Skills, Managing People, Foundations of Oganisational Behaviour, Global Business Issues, HR Management, Dissertation for International Project Management and Management Internship. She has supervised numerous Dissertations and Internship projects to successful completion with several students taking on PhD journeys. She is completing the programme leading to HE PG certificate. Olga practises interdisciplinary, engaged and research-led teaching to foster students’ personal and professional growth and promote social change. Her teaching interests are in critical and alternative perspectives on OB and HR, cross-cultural leadership and management, research methods, sociology of work, interdiciplinary crisis studies, BRICS bloc development.

Qualifications

(2011-2016) PhD, Middlesex University Business School. Thesis title: Understanding trans-border career trajectories: Post-Soviet women professionals in London
(2010-2011) MSc in Research Methods for Business and Management, Middlesex University
(2008-2010) International Master in Russian, Central and East European Studies, CEES, University of Glasgow + CES, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
(1999-2004) HE graduate degree in Cultural Anthropology, High Anthropological School, Chisinau

Research and Consultancy

Olga has been awarded postgraduate scholarships for International MSc at Glasgow University (2008), Master by Research (2010) and PhD (2011) at Middlesex University. Her PhD research investigates the impact of migration, family and class on transnational career strategisisng in the case of post-Soviet women living and working in London. Prior to this, Olga was involved in several research projects as fieldworker and interviewer, qualitative researcher and data analysist working in Moldova, Russia, UK and Italy (INTAS, 2004-2007; Warwick University, 2005-2007; Padua University, 2010-1013). Her research outputs and impact can be found here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=N6NLlFQAAAAJ&hl=en

Olga presented her research findings at international conferences in Social Sciences since 2010. She convened and chaired a panel at IMISCOE conference (Madrid 2014) and co-organised an international conference on skilled migration with CSPR (London 2017). Her research interests include working lives and career trajectories; design, clothing and creative industries; migration and gender in the EU and post-Soviet Eurasia. Her publications featured in Journals of distinction such as Sociology, Studies of Transition States and Societies and the British Journal of Industrial Relations. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Olga-Cretu

Publications and Scholarship Activities

Selected published works

Serezkhina E., Morrison C., Cretu O. (2021) ‘The Russian construction sector: Informality, labour mobility and socialist legacy.’ In D. Belman. J. Druker and G. White (eds.) Labour in construction: an international perspective, Routledge Research in Employment Relations.
Sacchetto D., Cretu O., Morrison C. (2019) International migration, labour mobility and HRM. In I.Roper, R. Prouska, U. Chatrakul Na Ayudhya (eds.) Critical Issues in Human Resource Management: Contemporary Perspectives. Macmillan International Higher Education | Red Globe Press, pp. 65-84.
Morrison C., Cretu O. (2018) ‘Migration scholarship in post-Soviet Russia: Between Western approaches and Eurasian geographies’, Sociology Special Issue 2018 ‘Migration and Crisis in Europe’.
Cretu O., Morrison C. (2017) Book review: ‘Social failures of EU enlargement: The case of workers voting with their feet’ by Guglielmo Meardi, Routledge, 2012, Debatte: JCCEE, 25(1).
Morrison C., Sacchetto D., Cretu O. (2014) ‘Labour mobility in construction: Migrant workers strategies between integration and turnover’, Construction Labour Research - CLR News 2: 33-49.
Morrison C., Sacchetto D., Cretu O. (2013) ‘International migration and labour turnover: Workers’ agency in the construction sector of Russia and Italy’, Studies of Transition States and Societies, 5 (2): 7-20.
Morrison C., Croucher R., Cretu O. (2012) ‘Legacy, conflict and ‘path dependence’ in the Former Soviet Union’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 50 (2): 329-351.

Conference presentations / papers

‘Authoritarianism and state-labour relations: the Russian case’, 41st International Labour Process Conference, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, April 2023
‘The impact of shock therapy of the 90s on attitudes to the current crisis and precarity at work in Britain’, IIPPE Annual Conference, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Sept 2018
‘Post-Soviet women aiming at ‘the golden mean’ between family and work in post-crisis London?’, BIURA Annual Conference, Middlesex University, June 2018
‘Capitalizing on post-Soviet background and FSU work experience in London’ the 8th Annual Conference in Political Economy (IIPPE), Berlin School of Economics and Law, Sept 2017
‘From crisis as a shock to crisis as a norm attitude: The post-socialist case’, presented to the Royal Geographical Society-IBG Annual Conference, RGS-IBG (London, Aug-Sept 2017)
‘Londongrad’: A new ‘home’ for ‘migrants’ from the post-Soviet space?’, presented at RC31 Sociology of Migration, Third ISA Forum of Sociology, University of Vienna, July 2016
‘Post-Soviet umbrella’ for migrants in London: ‘The researcher’ and ‘the researched’ at the 11th IMISCOE Annual Conference, Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Madrid, Aug 2014)
‘Professional women from the FSU in London: How did they get ‘there’?’ presented to the WES Annual Conference, University of Warwick, Sept 2013