Abstract
This paper develops a practice-theoretic framework for understanding how diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) travels across multinational enterprises (MNEs). Existing research often treats DEI as a set of policies that move from headquarters embedded in Western liberal institutional contexts to subsidiaries operating in diverse national settings. In contrast, this paper conceptualises DEI as a dynamic bundle of social practices that are continually enacted, interpreted and reconfigured within transnational organisational fields. Drawing on practice theory, it advances a four-site framework that examines translation across global infrastructures, national practice worlds, organisational routines and individual practitioners. The analysis shows how DEI gains meaning only through situated enactment and how translation processes can either reproduce or disrupt implicit hierarchies of knowledge that privilege Western models of inclusion. By illuminating DEI as a multi-sited practice process, the paper provides a more nuanced account of why DEI persists as a societal grand challenge and why its outcomes vary significantly across institutional contexts. The framework offers conceptual foundations for understanding how MNEs can foster more contextually informed and socially responsive forms of inclusion.