This paper focuses on the organizational capability approach, which allows a global and coordinated management of resources and facilitates future synergies within extended organizations. First an overview is given on the theoretical principles and the practical solutions supporting this approach, based on methods for standardizing and transferring firms' good practices. Then the lacks and the barriers limiting or avoiding its sustainable functioning are pointed out, especially concerning the autonomy and the innovation capability of learning entities. Finally a framework for managing organizational capabilities is proposed and modeled with the aid of UML and IDEF0 languages, following the theoretical principles and overcoming the identified barriers.