This article has discussed the ‘Icelandic banking crisis’ in relation to the notion of corporate social responsibility. It has explored some conceptual arguments for the position that the Icelandic banking crisis illustrates the broad problem of the indeterminacy of the scope and content of the duties that CSR is supposed to address. In particular, it has been suggested that the way the banks in question conceived of CSR, i.e. largely in terms of strategic philanthropy, was gravely inadequate. Accordingly, it has been inferred that concepts of CSR that are so broad as to endorse virtually any approach deemed suitable by individual businesses or industries too easily reduce to mere PR strategies in the form of corporate philanthropy. Such concepts are therefore likely to be inadequate for the purpose of CSR as encouraging socially responsible business understood in terms of duties prohibiting business from doing ‘something that is bad