Ownership structure is considered to be the most influential component
in corporate govern-ance; it is also closely related to firm
performance. The current research analyzes the effect of ownership
structure (both insider ownership board and managerial ownership,
blockholder ownership and institutional ownership concentration
pressure-insensitive and pres-sure-sensitive) on firm performance
(industry adjusted return on asset/IAROA) based on its life cycle. Life
cycle is incorporated into the research to examine whether the effect of
own-ership structure on firm performance differs at each stage of the
life cycle. The current re-search uses imbalanced panel data consisting
of 695 observations of sample firms from the manufacturing, IT, and
multimedia firms during the 2005-2010 period. The results show that: (1)
insider ownership has a significantly non-linear influence on IAROA,
indicated by a U-shaped curve (2) blockholders have a significantly
positive effect on IAROA in firms at the mature stage; on the contrary,
the effect is significantly negative in firms at the growth stage (3)
institutional ownership concentration has a significantly negative
effect on IAROA across the samples and a significantly positive effect
on firms at the mature stage, and (4) pressure-insensitive and pressure-
sensitive
institutional ownerships have a positive and sig-nificant effect on
IAROA in firms at the mature stage; on the contrary, the effect is
negative and significant in firms at the growth stage.