Paper long abstract:

The paper challenges the essence of common European market by exploring the process of transferring Scandinavian companies and production units to the Baltic States. By using ethnography as a bridge the efforts to establish transnational business cooperation are revealed. The varying notions on how to do business, how to establish a transnational cooperation, the varying attitudes towards legislation, environmental protection, safety at work and varying perception of what a valuable outcome of business cooperation should be question the workings of European community regulations.

How a cross-cultural marketplace is organized through formal regulations and norms, through networks and lobbying, through different interests,expectations, perceptions and constructed values, and how the entrepreneurs navigate in such a marketplace: these are the main topics viewed in the paper. Extensive fieldwork in Scandinavian companies in Latvia in 2006 and 2007 form the empirical base for the paper.