Contrary to the expectation that benchmarking would be a common practice of confrontation strategy firms, this did not prove to be the case. Only for some firms (the airline, bank, and car dealership) was the fear of falling outside the industry’s survival zone, as the consequence of failing to keep pace with best practice, prevalent. For the wool manufacturer, the integrated circuit manufacturer, and the whiteware manufacturer, benchmarking played a significantly lesser role. As one senior manager at the whiteware manufacturer stated, the extreme between-country and therefore between-competitor differences in salaries meant that matching some international best production standard often provided little solace. As an example, he pointed out that the international standard for building a refrigerator was 24 labor hours