The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) is emerging as a complementary governance mechanism supporting global net-zero transitions. While small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent the backbone of most emerging economies, their organizational readiness to engage in carbon markets remains underexplored. This study advances the organizational readiness literature by contextualizing SME preparedness within emerging carbon market governance and sustainability transition frameworks. Integrating the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), this study identifies and prioritizes key determinants of SME readiness and compares readiness levels across three major sectors in Vietnam: Industry and Construction (IC), Services (SV), and Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing (AFF). The analysis assesses five dimensions of readiness: knowledge, financial, institutional, managerial, and technological readiness. The findings indicate that knowledge readiness received the highest priority weight, followed by financial and institutional readiness. Sectoral analysis reveals that IC SMEs exhibit the highest readiness and remain the top-ranked sector across all leave-one-expert-out and criterion-weight sensitivity analyses, whereas the relative ordering of SV and AFF is more sensitive to panel composition. By revealing the relative importance of readiness dimensions and sectoral differences in an early-stage carbon governance context, this study provides policy-relevant insights for fostering inclusive low-carbon development pathways.

Purpose: This study develops an indirect and conditional explanation of the association between narcissistic leadership (NL) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB) among Vietnamese Generation Z employees. It examines organizational cynicism (OC) and turnover intention (TI) as mediators and moral disengagement (MD) as a dispositional boundary condition. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 352 Generation Z employees working in Vietnam. The model was tested using PLS-SEM in SmartPLS 4 and conditional process analysis. Findings: NL was positively associated with OC, which was associated with TI and CWB, while TI was positively associated with CWB. OC showed indirect-only mediation in the associations of NL with TI and CWB, and the serial indirect association through OC and TI was significant. MD strengthened the relationship between TI and CWB, and the conditional serial indirect association was stronger at higher levels of MD. The findings indicate that the association between NL and CWB is indirect through OC and TI and conditional on dispositional MD. Originality/value: This study is among the first to examine the association between NL and CWB through a conditional serial indirect framework grounded in social exchange theory (SET) and social cognitive theory (SCT). Integrating these perspectives clarifies how organizational cynicism, withdrawal intention, and dispositional MD jointly explain the association between narcissistic leadership and employee deviance. The study also provides evidence from an underexamined Generation Z workforce in Vietnam.