The present article strives to investigate the effect of trust in and power of the supervisor on different forms of cooperation within organizations by importing ideas from tax psychology – the Slippery Slope Framework (SSF; Kirchler, Hoelzl, & Wahl, 2008) – to organizational psychology. The basic assumptions of the SSF were transformed to an organizational context by proposing a positive effect of legitimate power and trust as well as a negative effect of coercive power on cooperation. The

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... ndent forms of cooperative behaviors were mandatory and discretionary cooperation (Tyler & Blader, 2000) as well as inner resignation (Schmitz, Gayler & Jehle, 2002). A questionnaire was constructed, validated and the new framework was tested with the data of 556 Austrian health sector workers between the ages of 20 and 60 using structural equation modeling. Through a model fitting process the qualities of and relationships between trust, legitimate and coercive power were reconsidered. The final model can explain 38% of the variance in inner resignation as well as 21% in discretionary cooperation. In order to promote cooperation it is suggested that supervisors primarily build trustful relationships with their employees and motivate them through incentives rather than through sanctions. Finally, it is implied to consider legitimate power as another specification of trust in further research.