CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

The previous chapter provided an overview of the theoretical and empirical position of auditing in businesses. Auditing was discovered necessary for any business operation, and it is most effective when implemented regularly and incorporated into a business's everyday operational practices. To inform this research, the following overall research question was developed; "What is the importance of auditing in business towards business success." As discussed in chapter one, this question can best be answered by setting several research objectives that will guide the researcher through the process. This study is broken down into three key research objectives. The first one is "to find the how auditing facilitates understanding business competitive gap towards business success in UK's firms." Secondly, "to analyse how auditing leads to customer understanding towards business success in UK's firms." Moreover, to "elaborate how auditing facilitates business compliance towards business success in UK's firms." The researcher will strive to accomplice the identified objectives throughout the study.

This chapter will revolve around the researcher's methodology in fulfilling this study's mandate. The first part of this chapter is the research philosophy that looks at the researcher's belief system in accomplishing the identified research objectives. Research strategy denotes the style that the researcher will adopt and the nature of data collected from the target respondents. The data collection section will explain whom the research aims to collect data from, how the data will be collected, and any other modification necessary to make respondents' data workable. A framework of analysis will also be looked into to ensure raw data is accurately analysed and reflect what respondents envisioned in the study. Finally, the purpose of the limitation and potential problem section is to highlight anticipated issues.

3.2 Research philosophy

The researcher will adopt a pragmatic research philosophy in answering the main research question. As defined by Sciberras and Dingli (2023), pragmatism implies a thought system and deliberate dealing with the problem at hand in a more practical approach. The researcher will apply operational decision-making in proving recommendations and conclusions to help UK firms perceive auditing through the correct lenses. According to Clarke and Visser (2019), pragmatic research philosophy helps researchers retain the objectivity needed to solve the research problem and provide a better platform for interacting with the target population. Through pragmatic research philosophy, the research will be able to answer What, When, How, Who, and Why questions predominate in this study. The pragmatic philosophy of the researcher in this study is that the real world provides a large pool of data needed to understand auditing and how it can benefit a business. For this reason, the research will interact with the target population with an agenda of solving real-world problems.

3.3 Research strategy           

This research will adopt a descriptive cross-section research design to solve the problem statement raised by scrutinising the research question to ensure all objectives are met. According to Wang and Cheng (2020), a descriptive research design is an approach utilised in research to describe a phenomenon as it is in the real world. Through this approach, a researcher can answer the questions such as 'what is the problem', 'how is it a problem', and 'who is affected by the problem,' among other predominate questions that the researcher finds vital in comprehending the importance of auditing in businesses. A descriptive cross-section research design is deemed fit for this study because the data regarding the utilisation of auditing functions in businesses in the target population is readily available and will form the basis for answering the raised research question.

The researcher will also strive to collect quantitative and qualitative data from the target respondents. Spector (2019) defined quantitative data as the type of respondents' inputs that can be quantified in numerical values. Through quantitative data, the researcher can understand the rate, distribution, and magnitude of the effect of the use of auditing in business operations in the selected population. On the second note, qualitative data can not easily be quantified into numerical values and contain opinions from the respondents (Spector, 2019). This type of data will be key in understanding the general position of auditing, how people feel about it, and the contribution of auditing towards business success, among other core auditing attributes under investigation in this study. By using both quantitative and qualitative data, the researcher will be in a position to offer an informed recommendation concerning the application of auditing in understanding competitive business gaps, understanding customers, as well as enhancing compliance.  

3. 4 Data collection

Data will be collected using a questionnaire. Bartram (2019) defined a questionnaire as a tool for data collection that helps researchers to re-defined the nature...