Mark Suchman

Mark Suchman (he/him) is a Professor of Sociology at Purdue University and a Research Professor and former Executive Director at the American Bar Foundation. His research interests center on the impact of legal institutions on organizational and economic life, with a particular focus on how legal conditions create—or foreclose—opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological change. 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 inter-organizational disputing practices, on social science approaches to the study of contracts, and on the emergence of law-like structures within corporate bureaucracies. His research has been supported by major grant-giving organizations, including the National Science Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and he has published extensively in leading scholarly journals, such as the Academy of Management Review, the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Law & Social Inquiry, and the Law & Society Review.  Before joining the Purdue faculty in 2024, he was a Professor of Sociology at Brown University, where he led the Sociology Department’s Work, Organizations, and Economy faculty. He has also served as a Program Director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, and he has chaired the American Sociological Association’s sections on Sociology of Law and on Organizations, Occupations and Work, and served on the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association.  He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University (1994), a J.D. from Yale Law School (1989), and an A.B. in Sociology from Harvard University (1983).