Migration of LGBTIQ+ inclusion policies across big 4 professional service firm websites

Abstract

This study critically examines the migration of disclosures regarding global LGBTIQ+ inclusion policies across 47 national Big 4 (Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PwC) professional service firm websites in 2024. Viewed as accounting-relevant artefacts, we draw on Foucauldian discourse analysis to explore how website disclosures are constructed to manage visibility, legitimacy, and reputational risk. We contribute with five ‘trans’ descriptors (transcending, transplanting, transgressing, transiting and transdenying), which collectively enable insight into the diversity of approaches taken to articulating how LGBTIQ+ inclusion policies and practices migrate across national contexts that are either progressive, progressing, regressing, or adversarial. The findings reveal significant inconsistencies within and across national website disclosures, suggesting that multinational firms struggle to maintain cohesive strategies while adapting to local contexts, and that local management have some latitude in determining disparate responses. We contribute to critical accounting scholarship, identifying the role of disclosure in constructing uneven regimes of visibility and legitimacy under contested socio-political conditions. Our study extends existing frameworks on policy transformation by proposing that disclosed commitments within the complex global organisational dynamics of power, discourse, and inclusion, can be understood through our five forms of trans-proxied change. We call for further context-sensitive approaches to exploring the migration of workplace diversity and inclusion policies.