We analyze media portrayals of the identity of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) regarding the 1998 Salt Lake City bribery scandal. Analyzing press accounts, supplemented by archival documents and interviews, we found that prior to the scandal, the IOC partitioned its hybrid identity elements, buffering ideology of Olympism from the economics of the Olympic Games. The scandal ruptured the identity boundary, mixing ideology and economics in the wake of the scandal, confounding and tainting organizational identity. With the scandal juxtaposing identity elements, calls for IOC reform advocated identity reconstruction that would again partition identity elements. Our findings attest to the critical role of boundary management in identity construction within a hybrid organization.