Quantitative Case Studies?

Beaulieu, Scharnhorst & Wouters' article on case studies from this weeks readings highlights some of the many difficulties of using ethnographic case studies as research tools. To me it seems like a lot of the problems boil down to the old, seemingly endless debate over quantitative vs qualitative research methods. I get the impression that the authors really like the idea of case studies, but recognize that their qualitative nature means they are unable to carry the same weight in research projects as more quantitative methodologies. As such, they seem to be trying to make case studies more quantitative (or at least find a way to frame them that way) in order to improve the general acceptance of their use. Perhaps that's a cynical way of viewing the article, but it certainly seems as though much of the criticism they level at case studies has to do with their qualitative nature, and they then propose ways to make them more objective and less interpretative.

That's certainly not to say that they're wrong, or that attempting to make case studies less qualitative is necessarily a bad thing. I just wish that, if that really is their objective, they would be more up front about it.