Sharing unpopular findings: When academic research challenges policy efforts

This chapter recounts Tricia Olsen's experience of sharing her findings from her dataset on corporations and their human rights records with the United Nations Working Group (UNWG) on Business and Human Rights. The seeming synergies linking the UNWG's professed commitment to data-driven policymaking to Olsen's own research interests appeared ideal to her (and her coinvestigator) at the time. In retrospect, however, it became clear that the UNWG faced constraints that led them to disregard findings that did not directly support the notion that the UN's Guiding Principles (UNGPs) on Business and Human Rights were properly designed to reduce human right abuses in the corporate context. Instead, Olsen confronted a range of questions, including how a researcher shares unpopular findings with stakeholders when they conflict with policies that are already agreed upon and/or are being implemented. Concerns about unpopular findings can also arise when researchers need the good will of organizations to ensure better policy outcomes. Olsen's chapter contextualizes the importance of probing the politics of an issue ahead of time, as well as understanding the constraints actors face within their organizations. This chapter provides guidance on strategies for engagement when incentives between scholars and policymakers are not aligned.