Abstract
Ownership structure proves to be one of the major factors affecting company accounting and market-based performance. The current study explored the direct ownership structure characteristics-performance relationship, with the former including government ownership, foreign ownership, and institutional ownership. The target sample of the study comprised of Omani non-financial firms examined in a three-year period. In addition, the study explored the moderating role of audit quality on the relationship between ownership structure and ROA, while considering the role of leverage as a control variable. The OLS regression was adopted to examine the direct government, ownership, foreign ownership and institutional ownership relationship with ROA, whereas the Hierarchical Multiple Regression was adopted to examine audit quality role as a moderating variable on the direct relationships. The obtained results revealed a significant and positive relationship between government ownership and foreign ownership and ROA, but an insignificant one between ROA and institutional ownership. The results also did not support the examined moderating role of audit quality on the above direct relationships. Towards the end, the study enumerated recommendations for future work.