“Relational Economics”: Josef Wieland publishes theory

In times of global value creation, questions of economic governance, stakeholder management and transcultural leadership lie at the core of academic and corporate-governance agendas, urgently calling for a new approach in economic theory. In his new book, LEIZ director Josef Wieland tackles these questions in depth and presents a comprehensive theory of Relational Economics.

Relational Economics is a contribution to political economics, focusing on the governance of economic transactions in modern societies. The book analyses the mechanisms of global value creation, elaborating on the cooperative productivity of global intra- and inter-firm networks, as well as on the corresponding requirements for transcultural leadership and intersectoral stakeholder management.

Within these contexts, Josef Wieland develops a categorical taxonomy for understanding economic interaction as a network of relations. Relational transactions and their governance constitute the analytical foundation of this concept, contributing to the understanding of the complex and polycontextual cooperation between actors from business, politics and civil society. Against this backdrop, Wieland further elaborates on the distribution of the resulting factor incomes and relational rents, adding the dimension of relational intersections and their economic relevance to the academic debate. He thereby addresses a core characteristic of modern economies in times of global value creation.