Exploration of the role of intellectual property as a moderator in the correlation between ownership structure and corporate performance

Abstract

This study is to verify the relationship between ownership structure and corporate performance, as well as the persistence of the relationship, by means of the relevant information of value creation provided by intellectual property. More than four thousand data of Taiwan listed companies during the period of 2002-2011 are analyzed in this research. Dynamic perspective is adopted to develop the persistence of the relationship between ownership structure and corporate performance. Regression results show that potentially non-linear relationship exists in the relationship between ownership and corporate performance. Evidence demonstrates that the impact of ownership on performance is a kind of corporate life cycle function, especially in the maturity stage as well as in the high-tech industry where it is particularly obvious. More importantly, the concept of intellectual property and the ownership mechanism of different industry attributes provide different information about value creation in different life cycle processes through dynamic design approach. For robustness, the measured variables of ownership are further lagged by a period to alleviate potential endogeneity issue. Overall, this study mainly contributes to extending the importance of corporate life cycle, and through this, more finely assessing the effect of ownership and the impact on corporate performance.