Auditing in the Charity Sector: Why Auditing is Legitimate in the Eye of Donors

The proposed study aims to investigate how audits in the charity sector create
or maintain recognition from donors. Specifically, it will examine how audits
gain and maintain legitimacy from large and small donors in the UK, despite
the donors' awareness of the limited scope of audited information.
Bourdieu's theory would be used to help us understand how audits obtain
legitimacy from donors. He integrates the concepts of field, capital and habitus,
and explains how actors in certain fields can obtain power through the
resources in their possession. Applying this theory, the following research
questions are proposed.
Research Question 1: What is the status of key actors in the charity sector and
what is their relationship? How do these key actors and their interactions
influence the process by which audits transform economic, cultural and social
capital into symbolic capital?
Research Question 2: What capital that auditors have accumulated in their
previous field has been transposed to the charity sector? How does the capital
influence the conversion to symbolic capital acquired from donors?
Research Question 3: In the charity sector, what economic, cultural and social
capital has been accumulated by auditors? How can such capital (in)directly
become, or negatively influence, the legitimacy (i.e. symbolic capital) of audits
in the eye of donors?
Research Question 4: What is the habitus of auditors in the charity sector?
How does the habitus influence the process by which audits acquire symbolic
capital from donors to charities?
Archival strategies will be used to provide a thick description and
contextualisation of the analysis. The study will review archival records, such
as the published audit reports of charities, audit procedural documents
released by the Charity Commission.
Semi-structured interviews will be used to investigate all research questions.
The study will use face-to-face and telephone interviews with approximately 35
participants, including auditors, large and small donors, charity beneficiaries
and experienced staff at the Charity Commission and charity organisations.
Before agreeing to be interviewed, participants will be informed that the
interviews will be reported anonymously to encourage them to be candid.
After data collection, thematic analysis will be used, and six phases of this
analysis will be followed.