Looking back at more than six decades of UN history, the words ‘indifference’ and ‘tension’ would best characterize the relationship between the global organization of states and the business community as key actors in the global marketplace.

A widely held opinion – that the United Nations was a ‘political’ organization, far removed from the concerns of ‘business’ – nurtured the image of two distinct and often hostile universes. Controversial issues on the United Nations' agenda (like the New Economic Order, Human Rights Guidelines for Multinational Companies and calls for boycott and sanctions) contributed to the divide between seemingly divergent actors, as did the debate on various economic models. This last was a flashpoint in conflictual East–West relations and the widening poverty gap between North and South, and has dominated the United Nations' political agenda for over two decades.

Despite early and positive examples of private–public partnerships in development cooperation and on environmental, social and labour issues, only the Global Compact would, in 2000, reframe the relationship more fundamentally and lay the groundwork for a different type of cooperation between the United Nations and the global business community. Through the Compact, the United Nations would recognize the strategic importance of the private sector as a key stakeholder of globalization and, indirectly, the significance of open markets and global norms for economic development.