Dr Francesca Andreescu is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour at Westminster Business School and a Chartered Member of CIPD (Academic Member) . She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching Practice in Higher Education (PGDip HE) from the University of Greenwich (London) and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Advance HE).
Francesca holds a PhD in Management from the University of Southampton in the areas of research specialism: Strategic Human Resource Management, Change Management and Public Management. Francesca's doctoral research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through a research scholarship granted to the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
Francesca is a member of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA) and British Academy of Management (BAM). She is also a member of the “Strategy as Practice” research network supported by the Advanced Institute of Management (AIM), UK.
Prior to joining academia, she gained experience working in both the public and private sector, building up expertise in international aspects of HRM and management. She carried out research and consultancy activities in HRM, change management and competence development in a number of public sector organisations. In her research work, she aims to encourage a closer relationship between HRM research and professional practice.
Francesca's research interests span across a range of topics relating to the consequences of hybrids and hybridisation on the nature and roles of the HR Function in the UK public sector, the role of HR in change management and competence development, models of public management for organisations at the cusp between public and private sectors, and the role of HR managers in creating ‘good work’ through digitalisation and People (HR) Analytics in public sector organisations. Her PhD dissertation called for a rethinking of normative models of strategic HRM and change management adopted by some public sector organisations and for a more contextualised perspective to be taken when considering the application of universal ‘best practices’ to the public sector. The study presented a comparative longitudinal analysis of strategic change and the role of HR in two commercialising public sector organisations of strategic importance for the UK economy. The research that she carried out has also helped her develop strong research and consultancy links with organisations that are leading players in their industries.
Francesca's current research aims to investigate how approaches to HRM and public management in the public sector vary between organisations based on the degree of publicness, with a focus on organisations at the cusp between public and private sectors.Within the emerging field of People (HR) Analytics, she is also particularly interested in investigating the role of HR managers in creating ‘good work’ through digitalisation and the implications for HR departments and HR’s strategic roles, especially in a public sector context where more research is needed in this area.
She is part of a number of international networks promoting comparative HRM/public sector research across countries, especially in a public sector context, such as the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA), the Dutch HRM Network (The Netherlands), the British Academy of Management (Human Resource Management Special Interest Group), the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) and the European Group for Organisational Studies.