In recent years, the transnational market has been involved with a rising trend in internationalization among firms (OECD 2008). Accelerating changes in the global business created complex conditions for ventures to be active in the global markets (Acs et al. 2003; Dana and Wright 2009; Etemad et al. 2001). However, technology advances and regional trade agreements as barrier reductions across borders have facilitated the market internationalization (Jafari Sadeghi and Biancone 2017; Leonidou 2004; Maignan and Lukas 1997; Zou and Stan 1998). Nevertheless, at all levels of the internationalization process, firms may face the potential compliance barriers, which jeopardize their activities and existence in the global markets. In this regard, according to Jafari Sadeghi et al. (2017), export compliance emerges as a hot topic in the world of international business. Although the literature has scantily considered the export compliance issues in the international entrepreneurship (IE) studies in last few years, academia turned the attention to the essence of this multidisciplinary driver for internationalization of firms. Recently, one of the accelerating challenges for the firms intending to expand their market abroad is their obligation to prevent making conflict in global markets. More precisely, companies need to be compliant with the international regulations, laws, and rules and avoid falling into the violation of none-compliance, which make the world unsafe. However, export compliance is an issue that may be a small segment of overall organization’s compliance program, nevertheless, if not properly addressed could create major challenges (BIS 2017). The United States is the leading government that initiated to monitor suspicious trades and transactions in cross borders and regulates legislations for the international transactions and trades. The European Union and United Nations joined the U.S. to manage global markets in export compliance problems by regulating restrictions on the parties do not respect the regulations. In this paper, we represent two distinct objectives. First, we outstrip the literature and explore the export compliance and then, we explain the function of export compliance on the internationalization of firms and international entrepreneurship. For doing so, we propose the following research questions: (1) what is the scope (examples) of export compliance? (2) Which regulations mostly address the export compliance issues? (3) What are the consequences of non-compliance with international regulations? (4) Does export compliance thread the existence of organizations in the international market or does it provide an opportunity for ventures to be successful beyond the borders? Consequently, to address these research questions, we analyze the essence and consequences of the export compliance for international endeavors of companies, building on the intersection of three points: regulation theory, internationalization and ownership advantages as a component of resource-based view (Dunning 1988). Theory of regulation, for this context, provides relevant analytical elements that allow a holistic understanding of the function of various national and international regulations for the export/ import of good and services, helping to explain how to improve the international performance. In the meantime, ownership, as a driver of international entrepreneurship, influence the presence of firms in global markets by a commitment to be compliant.