One negative news article or community protest can be enough to derail a company’s reputation, even its bottom line. In the digital age, the potential damage is accelerated through the power of instant, nonstop communication and social media. Crisis management has become so important in the corporate world that businesses hire teams of people just to handle it. But there is a better way. Witold Henisz, a management professor at Wharton, and Sinziana Dorobantu, a management professor at New York University, say the best way to handle a crisis is to avoid it. To do that, companies must invest the time in building relationships with stakeholders. Henisz and Dorobantu visited with Knowledge at Wharton to discuss their paper, “ Not All Sparks Light a Fire: Stakeholder and Shareholder Reactions to Critical Events in Contested Markets ,” which was co-authored with Lite Nartey of the University of South Carolina. The paper is forthcoming in the journal Administrative Quarterly .…