It seems to me that the types of interactions and the potential impact of the interactions you describe necesitate an element of reflexivity in your work, particularly given the subject matter. It seems to me that you are already asking the right questions - although it might also be worth considering under what circumstances your presence in the 'pot' has had an impact and when it has not (as part of the on-going look at agenda setting in general). It might be that at this point you will have no clear answer to this issue, in which case it might be something that could usefully be left open for a further round of research later. As to having someone else look at your impact instead of looking at it yourself - I would disagree; although needless to say other scholars might consider the same issues at a later stage.
It also occurs to me that you might want to think about role with reference to insider / outsider relations: I think Merton was one of the first to raise such issues in sociology in the early 1970s - your comments imply that you wish to be perceived as an outsider in order to adhere to social norms within your academic discipline; however the reality is that your research method is inevitably social and perhaps in some instances, socializing and in some instances you attain 'insider' status. Marie Smyth considers insider-outsider perspectives with respect to conflict research, noting that it rarely tends to be black and white by rather insider / outsider experiences tend to be multiple and layered...citations to follow...
Robert Merton, 1972, Insiders and Outsiders: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge, American Journal of Sociology, 77 (July), 9-47 and Marie Smyth (2005), "Insider-Outsider issues in researching violent and divided societies" in Researching Conflict in Africa, Insights and Experiences, Poter, Robinson, Smyth, Schabel and Osaghae (eds), United Nations University Press, NY, p9-23....hope those comments are useful...
RoC, great points and thanks for the citations.
I think there's definitely a broader research agenda to be undertaken here as far as determining when academics' "presence in the 'pot'" has an impact, and how much of an impact it takes to matter.
But it's tricky to estimate one's own personal influence because there's all kinds of noise involved due to the social context... practitioners may tell you your work made them think differently for example, but perhaps that's just politeness.
What kind of impacts would you see as significant here, and what would you see as reliable indicators of those impacts?
In the end a lot of this is interpretive, and perhaps just asking the questions is sufficient... but I'm not sure I'm satisfied with that.
Taking a structured empirical approach to this would be tricky, although with issues that weren't on the human rights agenda before that you raise in the course of your research, tracking instances where the issue is later raised and interviewing the people who have raised it as an issue would be a start...perhaps especially people that you haven't had irect contact with previously...while King Koehane and Verba might accuse you of 'testing on the dependent variable' it would be a start, especially at this early stage before the issue has diffused through the entire HR social system. Also you might want to think about content analysis as a supplemental source of confirmatory evidence - especially if you have a particular turn of phrase in your work that pops up in advocacy or policy related stuff....in my (limited) experience advocates and policy folks often aren't big on direct citations, but they will sometimes adopt phrases, or particular descriptions / keywords from academic writings...if you see large scale adoption of something you might even want to do a time series content analysis to see how the term diffused through the HR community and at what rate, and relate that to your own interventions...
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