Employees’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) experiences in Pakistan’s multinational subsidiaries

Ahmed, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4174-3660 (2026) Employees’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) experiences in Pakistan’s multinational subsidiaries. PhD thesis, University of Reading. doi: 10.48683/1926.00131520

Abstract/Summary

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have become central themes in organisational research and practice. Much of the existing scholarship has developed in Western contexts, privileging standardised categories of difference, such as gender, race, and age, while neglecting localised cultural, institutional, and historical realities. This has produced decontextualised understandings of DEI and overlooked employees’ lived experiences in non-Western contexts. This thesis addresses these gaps by investigating how employees in multinational companies’ (MNC) subsidiaries in Pakistan experience DEI, focussing on the interplay between country, organisational, and individual level contextual factors. This study employs a qualitative, social constructionist methodology to foreground employee experiences. Forty-three semi-structured interviews were complemented with observations and secondary data and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings demonstrate that global DEI frameworks are rarely transferred in standardised form. Instead, they undergo processes of negotiation and institutional translation shaped by Pakistan’s collectivist cultural norms, hierarchical structures, weak regulatory frameworks, and informal institutional arrangements. The study captures relational complexity of DEI experiences across national (macro), organisational (meso), and individual (micro) levels. While analytically distinct, the findings reveal significant overlap and mutual influence across these levels. This research makes several contributions. First, it challenges universal applicability of Western-centric DEI frameworks by demonstrating their partial and contested enactment in non-Western settings. Second, by empirically integrating macro, meso, and micro-level factors, the study advances Relational Framework that captures dynamic interplay of structural constraints, organisational agency, and individual experiences. Third, it emphasises middle managers’ discretionary role in shaping employees’ DEI experiences. Fourth, by centring employee DEI experiences, it critiques dominance of organisational or financial metrics in DEI scholarship.

Item Type	Thesis (PhD)
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/131520
Identification Number/DOI	10.48683/1926.00131520
Divisions	Henley Business School > Leadership, Organisations, Behaviour and Reputation
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