Purpose – To date, critical success factors for designing and implementing knowledge management system at national level for countries have not been systematically investigated. Existing studies have derived their critical success factors from companies’ perspectives and have not considered the needs of a larger scale such as a country and at a national level. This paper aims to bridge this gap

Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative case study technique has been used in this paper for data collection to gain insights into the topic being investigated. For that, “grounded theory” research approach has been selected, by which the collected data from real case studies (European countries) are categorized and analyzed through specific stages. The extracted concepts can demonstrate critical success factors of a knowledge management master plan at a national level

Findings – The overall results from the real case studies were positive, thus reflecting the appropriateness of the proposed critical success factors. Also 20 concepts and one semantic network are the other findings of this research that clarify how to design and implement a knowledge management system at a national level. The semantic network shows the most important factors (concepts), their effects on one another, and their relations

Practical implications – The set of critical success factors can act as a list of items for countries to address when adopting knowledge management (KM). This helps to ensure that the essential issues and factors are covered during the design and implementation phase. For academics, it provides a common language for them to discuss and study the factors crucial for the success of a knowledge management master plan at a national level

Originality/value – This study is probably the first to provide an integrative perspective of critical success factors for implementing KM level in countries. It gives valuable information and guidelines that hopefully will help governments to accomplish knowledge management through their countries