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The mechanical response of polycrystalline metallic materials under cyclic plastic deformation has a high relevance for the reliable design of structural components. A key phenomenon in this context is the Bauschinger effect (BE), which describes reversed plasticity after a load reversal occurring at low yield stress. Explanatory models exist to explain the BE that allow for qualitative evaluations of experimental data. The aim of this work is to quantitatively evaluate the contributions of the various mechanisms underlying the BE using data of the austenitic steel 316L. To this end, a representative volume element of the polycrystalline microstructure and single crystal plasticity with various local and non-local kinematic hardening models were established. The latter take contributions to the BE from geometrically necessary dislocations into account. Finite-element simulations are performed using material properties determined from cyclic stress–strain data. The simulation results indicate that for the investigated 316L microstructure and loading amplitude, the macroscopic BEF is predominantly governed by the grain-level behavior, with the median of the interacting individual grains reproducing the total polycrystal BEF to within approximately 10%. The effect of the internal stresses arising from geometrically necessary dislocations on the BE is small as the internal stresses are very localized. The local hardening models are able to accurately capture the BE, whereas the investigated non-local models, which were not independently calibrated for cyclic loading conditions, do not adequately reproduce the experimentally observed BE.