Being the boss, being bossed: Social entrepreneurs' experience of flexibility in prosocial work

Abstract This study examines how occupational conditions influence psychological experiences of flexibility through an interpretive analysis of interviews with social entrepreneurs. While existing research demonstrates that flexibility access is often limited to privileged workers, we reveal that power and autonomy do not guarantee psychological experiences of flexibility. Our analysis reveals that despite having autonomy and power, social entrepreneurs experience constrained psychological job and boundary control due to prosocial role entrapment as the convergence of multi‐stakeholder demands, power position duality, mission‐driven obligations and heightened organizational identification that accompany the pursuit of prosocial work. In response, social entrepreneurs engage in situated boundary work that combines integration preferences with learned segmentation practices and continuous boundary negotiation. The study advances our understanding of flexibility and social entrepreneurship by revealing how occupational conditions shape psychological experiences of flexibility, introducing prosocial role entrapment as a dual‐pathway mechanism constraining flexibility in prosocial work and highlighting the relevance of emotional boundaries to social entrepreneurship research.