Besides the mean flow the alpha is the other input quantity for any mean-field dynamo model. It describes the generation of turbulent electromotive force <u × B> from a large-scale field <B> for a given turbulence. The necessary helicity of the turbulence results from the joint action of Coriolis force and density stratification. The standard estimate of 1 km/s for alpha in galaxies is a surely well-established approximation. One of the essentials, however, remains open. Due to the extremely anisotropic structure of disks the tensorial character of alpha can no longer be ignored. In stellar applications anisotropy in the α-tensor leads to a preferred excitation of non-axisymmetric magnetic fields. That is true for α2 -dynamos if the alpha parallel to the rotation axis, α||, is much smaller than that in the equatorial plane, α⊥. The idea is that also for disk-like configurations a similar behaviour makes the existence of the observed large-scale non-axisymmetric magnetic BSS modes understandable within the frame of the mean-field dynamo theory.