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October 26, 2007
Hair product magnate John Paul DeJoria examined
the importance of practicing good business ethics, maintaining
client and employee satisfaction and giving back to the
community during a VIP Distinguished Speaker Series talk Oct.
15. DeJoria, co-founder and CEO of John Paul Mitchell Systems
and co-founder of Patron Tequila, said he learned the value of
hard work and good ethics from a young age. During high school,
he worked at a dry cleaning business and still remembers when
his frugal boss gave him a 25-cent raise because he had cleaned
upstairs without being asked. “It’s not what you do, but what
you do when nobody else is watching,” DeJoria said. “That’s
character.” 
Leon Lasdon, a professor in the Information,
Risk, and Operations Management Department, discussed the
importance of operations research as an element of
corporate decision making Oct. 16 during his Faculty Research
Presentation Series lecture. Operations Research, Lasdon said, is
“the discipline of applying advanced analytical methods to help
make better decisions.” 
It’s
fresh. It’s bold. It’s great. Two weeks ago you didn’t know this
product existed. Now that you’ve seen it, you simply must have
it! What transforms an ordinary product into fly-off-the-shelf
merchandise? Part of the answer is good product design. But experienced
designers and researchers are still pinpointing exactly what
constitutes “great design” and how best to incorporate those
factors into the innovation process. Industry leaders, faculty
(including Violina Rindova,
associate professor of
management, right) and
researchers delved into these questions at the Consumer-Oriented
Product Design Conference held at the McCombs School. 
After
a wave of accounting scandals and subsequent laws
intended to clean up reporting by public companies, as a career,
accounting turned red hot, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
was responsible. Each year, the McCombs School graduates about 300 people in accounting fields, said Rachel Brown, associate
director of the school’s Master’s in Professional Accounting
program. But the school does not emphasize Sarbanes-Oxley training
above other areas of the profession. “We really want to educate
students about all of their career options,” she said.
Sarbanes-Oxley is directly responsible for many of the jobs
capturing new graduates, although some jobs were created
indirectly. As companies spun off consulting services or created
other specialty services, they needed staff to fill new jobs,
Brown said. Now, graduates in public accounting, all can find work quickly after
graduation, she said. 