Maucher has observed the efficient work of environmental and human rights NGOs within the UN system with great concern. When Maucher became vice president of the ICC in 1995, he immediately dove into a reorganization process. He brought in a new Secretary-General, Maria Livanos Cattaui, who for many years had organized the World Economic Forum in Davos and like Maucher has a wide ranging network of international contacts. Maucher himself divides his time as ICC president with his leadership of the European Roundtable of Industrialists. The ICC, with its strategic cooptation of the message spread by NGOs and people's movements, is attempting to use the growing consensus that global deregulation is creating serious social and environmental problems to its advantage.
Globalization has the potential to bring immense benefits to the human race.
But as recent events in East Asia have demonstrated, it can swiftly magnify local crises into problems affecting the entire world economy. Hence the need for a framework of rules on investment, capital markets, competition policy and a host of other areas. The UN seems to have largely given up worrying about the growing economic dominance of transnational corporations worldwide. Work on the Code of Conduct on TNCs has stopped entirely. However, the ICC does by no means represent all businesses, but principally only the largest transnational corporations.