Knowledge Management Maturity Assessment: Evidence from the Literature and a Research Agenda for the Brazilian Public Nuclear Sector

Knowledge Management (KM) maturity assessment has been consolidated as a relevant instrument for analyzing an organization’s capacity to create, share, and apply knowledge, enabling the identification of developmental stages and gaps in existing practices. In the Brazilian public sector—particularly within the nuclear domain—this approach is especially pertinent, as KM supports high standards of safety, reliability, and sustainability in a context characterized by technological complexity, stringent regulatory requirements, and strong dependence on specialized expertise. In order to map and analyze the international literature on KM maturity assessment, a scoping review was conducted with a focus on applications in the public sector and the nuclear field, aiming to delineate a research agenda for the Brazilian public nuclear sector encompassing processes, people, and technologies. The bibliometric corpus was constructed using the Scopus and Web of Science databases, applying the descriptors “knowledge management maturity,” “maturity model,” and “maturity assessment.” The search strategy resulted in 12 articles indexed in Scopus and 7 in Web of Science, totaling 19 studies. The findings indicate a predominance of KM maturity models applied to the Brazilian public sector, with still limited investigations explicitly addressing the nuclear domain. The most frequently referenced frameworks include the Asian Productivity Organization (APO) model and the model proposed by Batista (2012), which has been widely adopted in Brazilian public administration. An increasing alignment of these models with international normative frameworks, particularly ISO 30401:2018, was also observed. These findings contribute to both the theoretical and applied advancement of KM in Brazilian public nuclear organizations, with implications for safety, governance, and institutional sustainability.