Covey was most recently a professor at Utah State University

(BBC) Motivational author Stephen Covey, who wrote the best-selling The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, has died at the age of 79.

Covey passed away at an Idaho hospital on Monday from complications caused by an April bicycle accident in Utah.

“He was surrounded by his loving wife and each one of his children and their spouses, just as he always wanted,” the family said in a statement.

Covey reportedly sold more than 20m books in his career.

In April, he was brought to hospital after being knocked unconscious in an accident on a steep road.

His publicist, Debra Lund, said at the time that doctors had not found any signs of long-term damage to his head.

Covey grew up in a tight-knit Mormon family on an egg farm near Salt Lake City, according to a Fortune magazine profile.

After gaining an MBA from Harvard University and a doctorate from Brigham Young University, Covey became a business management professor at Brigham Young.

With the success of the 1989 publication of Seven Habits, Covey began a management consulting business that proved popular with major companies and government agencies.