Why we could need a Relational Economics … and why standard economics and its (orthodox) derivations do not help

The theoretical landscape of economic, management, and social sciences is already rather crowded to advance with light heart a further proposal. Therefore, this chapter aims only to offer elements to reason about the opportunity to create the new research field of Relational Economics. I suggest three main lines of reasoning that can help for this purpose. Firstly, I attempt to show that standard economics and its (orthodox) derivations do not provide the right theoretical background. Secondly, I argue that complexity science should be the methodological and epistemological framework on which developing Relational Economics. Finally, I outline five research streams - behavioral and evolutionary economics, analytical and relational sociology, and organization science – that could be the building blocks of the new approach. They are largely consistent and partially overlapped each another, and thus, beyond the relatively different languages, it is not difficult to imagine its convergence to a unitary proposal.