Entry into turbulent business networks ‐ The case of a Western company on the Estonian market

Adopts a holistic network approach to analyse a company’s entry into a turbulent market. The entry is examined as a process. The analysis focuses on the temporal context of business interaction; it inspects how the company copes with uncertainty, and proposes that the concept of a focal net be applied for strategic analysis of the context. In the empirical part, the Estonian market exemplifies a turbulent environment, and the entry process of one Western high‐technology company is analysed. It is concluded that, while all interaction on any business market involves elements of the historic background as well as the participants’ expectations of the future, history now seems to dominate the markets of Eastern Europe.