Being the boss, being bossed: Social entrepreneurs' experience of flexibility in prosocial work
研究通过对社会创业者的访谈，发现尽管他们拥有自主权和权力，但由于亲社会角色束缚（多利益相关者需求、权力地位双重性、使命驱动义务和高组织认同），其心理灵活性和边界控制受到限制，并采取情境性边界工作来应对。
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.