Abstract:

The article analyzes an important category of costs, which can represent loses of material resources, human resources or energy, and appears as hidden costs. Understanding these costs leads to efficient planning of future activities and maintaining a good status on the competitive market. The real value of a hidden cost cannot be evaluated, because it is included in other costs. General dysfunctions generated by disturbances and deviations in the firm activities generate substantial financial results in the form of hidden costs. These refer to absenteeism, work accidents, staff rotation, productivity deviations and low product quality. Identifying and supervising hidden costs is very important because it influences the company’s performance. Solutions to diminish these costs have to be found in order to keep the performance of the firm at a high level.