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Human Relations
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How to sell your soul and still get into Heaven: Steven Covey's epiphany-inducing technology of effective selfhood

John G. Cullen

Department of Business and Law at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, john.g.cullen{at}nuim.ie

Steven Covey's The 7 habits of highly effective people, one of the most influential and popular contemporary self-help texts, has resulted in the development a large multinational consulting business, several spin-off texts, and much imitation since its publication in 1989. An examination of the text, informed by Critical Discourse Analysis, is conducted with a view to unearthing the textual, discursive and socio-cultural practices that have enabled the work and its message to become so popular. 7 habits is an epiphanogenic (or epiphany-inducing) technology emerging from an `effectiveness' discipline supported by three socio-cultural trends: the postmodern, saturated self; the coming of neo-liberal society and the financialization of the self; and the subjective turn. Covey's discipline of effectiveness aims to produce a self that is simultaneously de-saturated, financialized and expressivist, but supportive of conservative, universalist and late-capitalist modes of being.

Key Words: effectiveness • epiphanogenic • gurus • management development • self • spirituality • technologies of the self

Human Relations, Vol. 62, No. 8, 1231-1254 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0018726709334493
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