Purpose – The aim of this paper is to propose a model to assess the maturity level of companies’ organisational, managerial and technological levers for Virtual communities of practices (VCoP). The proposed model serves as a benchmarking tool in order to analyse an industry sector performance in the management activities of VCoP. Design/methodology/approach – The methodological approach was divided into two main stages: (i) the development of the VCoP Maturity Assessment Model, and (ii) an application of such model to different realities (benchmarking). The model proposes the assessment of eight key elements to measure the company’s organisational, managerial and technological maturity in order to find a correlation with the performance and business impact of the VCoPs. On the other hand, the performance of the VCoP is evaluated based on four main criteria: utility, trust, contribution and sense of belonging. After the development of the model, we carried out an application of it in a benchmarking study of six of the major Oil and Gas global companies focusing on the Exploration & Production sector of such companies. Originality/value – The main contribution of this paper is that an assessment carried out by the proposed model provides an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the VCoP management system, and the opportunity for comparison with other organisations. Moreover, the assessment also enables the identification of a series of potential actions that can be undertaken in order to improve the current status of the virtual communities. Practical implications – Our benchmarking study put in evidence the usefulness of the proposed model. Companies were compared and ranked in terms of the performance of VCoP management. Such results helped companies to have a clear vision of their own state in management practices. Moreover, the assessment helped in identifying the best practices to be shared in order to improve the overall usage of VCoPs within the Oil and Gas industry.
Keywords – Communities of Practice, maturity assessment model, Oil and Gas industry