Almost 10 years ago, I was on the IATA ground operations working group. The single biggest item being pushed by IATA was the I-GOM (IATA Ground Operations Manual), intended to be the sole document of reference for all airlines. In theory a great idea, however, in real life too many vested interests and strong-headed members of the working group meant progress was incredibly slow. To give you an example, there wasn't even agreement on something as simple as chocking procedures. For any given airliner type, you'd find up to 5 different ways of choking it, and the members of the working group was unable to reach a consensus. I mean, how bleeding difficult can it be to throw a few pieces of rubber forward and aft of an agreed set of wheels?
The I-GOM is still work in process, and that's a pretty good picture of IATA. Is that the fault of IATA itself? No, it's a members driven organisation and it cannot move without the agreement of its members. And, to a rather large and sad extent, the members were/are like petulant little kids, each wanting all the toys in the cot arranged after the specific ideas.