<p>In a dynamic business environment, organizations must continuously evolve to sustain a competitive edge by developing new capabilities while also enhancing the existing ones. Maturity models have become a useful management tool for enhancing organizational capabilities, offering a structured framework to assess and improve capabilities over time. By defining distinct stages of development, maturity models help organizations identify their current state and plan future improvements. However, despite their widespread use in domains like software development and project management, a significant theoretical gap remains in the conceptualization of maturity levels, especially those related to organizational capabilities. This paper presents a maturity level characterization model (MLCM) for organizational capabilities, addressing the gap in existing research by providing a model that can be used to develop capability maturity models. Drawing from the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, this model defines six stages of maturity, ranging from unaware to expert, and offers a theoretically grounded instantiation template for developing maturity levels for organizational capabilities. The research utilizes design science research methodology, with the model being applied and evaluated in the context of advanced data analytics capabilities. Two evaluation questionnaires among 18 practitioners confirm the model’s validity, relevance, completeness, clarity, and usefulness, providing a solid foundation for developing capability maturity levels. Theoretically, this research advances maturity modeling literature by conceptualizing organizational capability maturity by using the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition as a foundational meta-theory, and combining perspectives from institutional theory. Practically, it provides a useful tool for both researchers and practitioners aiming to evaluate and improve organizational capabilities in various domains.</p>