INTRODUCTION TO THE CONFERENCE.

The article presents information on papers related to business planning that were presented at the "Strategy Formulation: Different Perspectives" conference, which was held in May 1976 in France. The objectives of the conference were: to share widely divergent perspectives on strategy formulation, to recognize that there is no single valid approach but many, and to see if these can, in some ways, be synthesized. Derek Channon's paper "Strategy Formulation As an Analytic Process," discussed the practices of the contemporary national firm. In the paper, "Strategy Formulation As a Structural Process," John Child and Arthur Francis examined the roles of structural techniques in the formulation of business strategies. John Edwards described "Strategy Formulation As a Stylistic Process," emphasizing the notion that the process is significantly influenced by the culture or style of an organization. Claude Faucheux carried this a step farther, and in his paper "Strategy Formulation As a Cultural Process," revealed the different assumptions implicit in the Anglo-Saxon and Latin approaches to strategy formulation.