She presented conclusions she wanted the students to support without offering a shred of evidence. The very first thing I’d have done is demand to see evidence to support her claims that the mine was unsafe. Show me accident rates. Show me reports from government safety inspectors/compliance with local mining regulations. Show me any safety audits conducted on that mine. Show me the maintenance records for the equipment, etc etc etc.
I’d also bring up the fact that those miner’s livelihoods depend on the mine being open. So shutting it down without the evidence to support that might cause immense harm to all the people who depended on that mine for a living.
Then again, I got my MBA over 20 years ago and have seen how things work....so I’m not about to be buffaloed by some prof with her self righteousness and no evidence.....
I got mine nearly 40 years ago. The cases we analyzed were chock full of data for us to dig through. Profs weren't satisfied with shooting from the hip and mere opinions. They ripped you to shreds if you didn't have data and analysis to support your conclusions. Creating those cases from real-life business situations involved a lot of work, and learning from them was a powerful process. When I applied that learning to real-life business, I was quickly humbled by how little I knew. On the positive side, it taught me a lot about non-linear thinking and working through ambiguity and complexity. Great life skills.