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The paper aims to describe the application of theoretical principles derived from a study of self‐organisation and complex systems theory and their application to school‐based capacity building to support planned change.

The paper employs a case example in a Hong Kong School to illustrate the application of the principles and discuss their potential to sustain the effect of capacity building in schools.. The descriptive case study is used to illustrate six theoretical propositions of self‐organization. The case is then unpacked using each of the propositions to illustrate the application of the theory to capacity building in a secondary school setting.

The case illustrates the way each of the principles are reflected in a design process undertaken by the school's principal and its leadership team to create a self‐organizing approach to capacity building.

The value of this paper is threefold. First it shows the way in which capacity building can be theorized for practical benefit in school settings. Second, the theoretical approach described in the case study addresses the longstanding and largely unresolved issue of the sustainability of capacity building efforts in school settings. The case analysis links theory to practical strategy that can be used by school leaders to design their own capacity building efforts that disperse control to the community, are sustainable, and self‐organizing within the school.

There is a growing demand worldwide for the adoption of Learning management systems (LMS) by academic institutions to support e-Learning platform. Yet limited research has been conducted to investigate the factors affecting its usage, particularly by university instructors. To fill this research void, the expectation-confirmation model (ECM) was used as the core framework for analysis, while additional critical independent factors related to organizational, technological and individual characteristics were added to find a better model to understand university instructors’ continuance intention to use Blackboard system as a popular LMS.

Sample data were gathered from 158 university instructors at a university in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who volunteered to participate in this study. Structural equation modeling technique was used to verify the causal relationships between the constructs.

Perceived usefulness (PU) affected satisfaction of Blackboard system. Both PU and satisfaction affected instructors’ continuance intentions to use Blackboard system. User-interface design affected both PU and satisfaction. Technical support influenced perceived usefulness. Training influenced perceived usefulness, but it had no influence on satisfaction. Computer self-efficacy had no influence on perceived usefulness.

Based on the ECM, this study contributes significantly to the limited body of research on capturing the influence of organizational, technological and individual motivators to explain university instructors’ continuance intention to use LMS.