The organizational literature has long acknowledged the effects of various formal organizational variables on informal structure. Nevertheless, very few systematic and empirically testable propositions have been formulated specifying relationships in this area. In this article a number of testable propositions are developed which relate the variables of compliance, mobility and size to motivation for clique formation and to constraints within which cliques form. A typology of five clique types (1) coercive cliques, (2) normative cliques, (3) high-mobility utilitarian cliques, (4) seniority utilitarian cliques, and (5) no-mobility utilitarian cliques, is discussed.
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