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This paper provides a researcher's account of fieldwork experience in conducting audit research in China. By illustrating on-site fieldwork encounters, the paper reflects stages of access negotiation and management in the fieldwork, reveals the researcher's embodied “affects” in the fieldwork and reasserts the value of researcher's openness and attention in the fieldwork.

This paper uses autoethnography as its overall epistemology. Fieldwork diaries and vignettes are written in the first-person voice to present the researcher's embodied account of fieldwork experience, researcher’s learning and coping skills in managing the fieldwork.

The research findings are not detached from the researcher's experience of the fieldwork. The fieldwork experiences in this study highlight that the fieldwork access is an ongoing process. Different stages of access negotiations, from rejection to acceptance, reveal the tensions between researcher and participants. This study draws attention to the online platform, WeChat, in connecting with auditors to learn from them and suggests openness to the fieldwork encounters and a resilient engagement with auditors.

In reflecting on the researcher's transformation during the fieldwork, this paper argues for a relational and engaged way of conducting fieldwork, rather than a disengaged and judgemental approach in studying auditors' working lives. The paper pays attention to fieldwork as a process and how the knowledge learned in the field is infused with researcher's fieldwork experiences.

The aim of this paper is to synthesise polyester/silica hybrid resins and their hybrid polyurethanes via in situ (IS) and blending (BL) methods and to evaluate the effect of preparation method, interaction type and silica content on the physico‐chemical and thermal properties of polyurethane/silica (PU/Silica) hybrid coatings.

Silica particle‐containing silica sol was prepared according to Stöber method using tetraethylorthosilicate as the precursor and then introduced into polyester matrix by in situ and direct blending method. The modified polyester/silica resin was further crosslinked with TMP‐TDI adduct to synthesise PU/Silica hybrid coatings and studied for thermo‐mechanical, physico‐chemical properties.

It was found IS polymerisation caused more polyester segments to chemically bond onto the surface of silica particles than BL process. Results also reveal that due to stronger interaction between silica particles and PU matrix, hybrid resins prepared by IS method confers better properties than BL method and exhibit optimal properties at the critical concentration of 8 wt% silica.

In the present study, silica particles are used to modify properties of polyurethane resins. Many other countless combinations in terms of inorganic filler or organic matrices can be explored to obtain a wide range of interesting properties and applications.

The results obtained in this study will be extremely useful to enhance the understanding of this class of hybrid materials.

Hybrid organic‐inorganic networks offer a new area of material science that has extraordinary implications for developing novel materials that exhibit a diverse range of multi‐functional properties.