I had a brief, but interesting, interview yesterday with Nortel Networks CEO Bill Owens and Gary Daichendt, who was recently hired as president and COO. Aside from the obvious plan for Daichendt to eventually replace Owens as CEO, I was struck by their intention to use Nortel as a platform to promote integrity and ethics among senior management in North America. The idea is Nortel will set an example to the rest of the world by behaving well and responsibly at a time when there is so much focus on executives gone bad - i.e. Bernie Ebbers and Martha Stewart. In some respects, Nortel's new mandate comes across as evangelistic, particularly Daichendt's assertion that if he, Owens and other executives can't restore integrity to North American businesses, there is something terribly rotten in the state of Denmark. The cynic in all of us would suggest the moral fiber mantra is nothing more than PR for a company rocked by a greed-driven accounting scandal, but you also get the feeling Owens is trying to build a management team consisting of people with skills and high morals. There will definitely be no Boeing hanky-panky going on in lovely Brampton, Ont.