| Recently, the US economy has experienced profound changes---rapid job creation and destruction, globalization, and the emergence of a knowledge economy. The number and influence of popular management gurus have exploded. The two trends are related. Gurus often drive these changes and help ease the anxiety produced by these changes. Some management gurus spread a therapeutic message combining "self-help" and "business" ideas in a coherent program of action. Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, provides a model.;I explore the articulation of "self-help" and "business" via The 7 Habits. I draw upon critical organizational communication studies and cultural studies to explore how management gurus and their ideas shape workplace subjects. Using a Foucaultian discursive theory, I analyze The 7 Habits and interviews with employees trained to implement The 7 Habits at work, and provide an ethnographic account of a seminar given by Covey.;I argue that The 7 Habits represents a re-articulation of several deeply embedded American cultural practices: religion, spirituality, business, and work. In this re-articulation, "business" subsumes "religion" and provides a powerful source of cultural authority. Hence, today our cultural and spiritual guides are often management gurus. This re-articulation may be understood as a program of government involving the managerialization of the state, society, and personal lives. The 7 Habits fits into this program that turns state services and social angst into problems to be managed.;Part of this management occurs within the self. Those who use The 7 Habits report great satisfaction with the program; it helps them remain "grounded" and balanced in times of stress. These employees also express ambivalence toward elements of The 7 Habits that encourage collaboration; this teaching violates deeply held American values.;Viewed through the lens of technologies of power and the self, The 7 Habits offers privately empowering therapy. It does not offer wisdom regarding one's status as a historically contingent subject. This simultaneous enablement and constraint may lead to continuing uncertainty and individual empowerment, and may blunt organized political action. A better self-help program would allow access to and intervention in one's subjectivity. |
