PROVIDENCE – Brown University has signed an agreement to create a joint program with Instituto de Empresa, an elite European business school, administrators said Tuesday at a meeting of Brown faculty.

Instituto de Empresa – usually referred to as “I.E.” – is a private university with campuses in Madrid and Segovia. It is ranked by BusinessWeek as the second-best business school outside the U.S. and as sixth-best worldwide by the Financial Times. It is also ranked among the world’s top 15 business schools by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist magazine.

In February, Brown Provost David Kertzer and I.E.’s rector, Santiago Iñiguez, signed a memorandum of understanding that laid the groundwork for collaborations between the two schools. The agreement announced Tuesday is the first fruit of the agreement.

In a news release, Brown said the schools are planning “a joint initiative for research and training in commerce, entrepreneurship and organizational management.” The program will see exchanges of the two schools’ faculty members and students from various programs and different academic levels.

“Utilizing the strengths of IE Business School in management and Brown’s excellence in the humanities, social, biological and physical sciences, both institutions seek to foster a platform of interdisciplinary research and teaching,” according to Brown.

Brown said the first major joint venture by the two schools would involve I.E.’s international executive M.B.A., offered in collaboration with Brown’s Office of Continuing Education and aimed at senior executives with more than a decade of work experience. Most of it will be taught by I.E. faculty, Brown said.

I.E. plans to launch a new version of its international executive M.B.A. with input from Brown this summer. The program, which would include time on the schools’ campuses in both Providence and Madrid, is scheduled to start in the fall of 2010.

Brown is one of only two Ivy League schools that does not have a business school, the other being Princeton. The university does offer a business economics concentration through its C.V. Starr Program in Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship, as well as a master’s degree Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship. The university said both will play a role in the partnership with I.E.

In an e-mail to PBN, David Kennedy, Brown’s vice president for international affairs, said officials at Brown “see a synergy between Brown’s strengths in sciences and humanities and I.E.’s strengths in business and executive education, and are excited about ways in which this initiative will strengthen Brown’s capability in continuing, adult and online education.”

“We hope this enhanced capability at Brown will contribute to the emergence of a knowledge-based economy with international reach here in Rhode Island,” Kennedy added.

“This initiative comes at a particularly propitious time, as the global economic situation calls for a systematic rethinking of financial systems and management paradigms,” Iñiguez said.

“There needs to be a much wider approach to understanding the role of corporations and managers within our global society,” he continued. “Managers need to be exposed to broader philosophies and schools of thought, building a wider vision of value creation and sustainability.”

“This alliance is a major step forward in developing a higher education model which is focused on developing students who are global citizens as well as well-rounded professionals,” Iñiguez said.