Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Mark Suchman is Professor of Sociology; a former Chair of the American Sociological Association’s sections on Organizations, Occupations, and Work and on Sociology of Law; and a former board member of the Law and Society Association and the American Bar Foundation. His research interests center on the relationship between law and organizations, with a particular focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in the information technology and healthcare sectors. Perhaps best known for his theoretical work on organizational legitimacy, he has also conducted major empirical studies on the role of law firms in Silicon Valley, the governance challenges posed by new information technologies in health care, and the sequential structure of the entrepreneurial start-up process. In addition, he has written on organizational networks, on interorganizational disputing practices, on social science approaches to the study of contracts, and on the “internalization” of law within corporate bureaucracies. His project at the Cogut Institute explores a string of startling developments in American legal doctrine on “corporate personhood,” situating those developments in the context of evolving social-science understandings of organizational action, and evolving cultural understandings of entrepreneurial agency and corporate social responsibility.