Inhalt

An initial point of the paper that is presented here is the increasing competition among universities. One instrument to react to the increased competition is the constitution of networks consisting of former students, i.e. Alumni-organizations. The focus of this paper is the question of an efficient constitution of such an organization. In order to discuss this matter, some Alumni organizations had first of all been investigated by means of theoretical concepts. The constitution and the existence of Alumni organizations could be described by means of its actors, i.e. persons and organizations on the basis of the network approach, the exchange theories and the social capital concept. These approaches show the reason why and which processes have to be initiated, in order to operate such organizations successfully. The modified concept of the data net is characterizing the development processes (how they should take place efficiently) and depicts net structures within and in the background of the Alumni organizations. The hypotheses in the theoretical part have been checked subsequently by means of interviews. As a conclusion of this paper you can say that the activity of Alumni-networks can be improved by an efficient communication system as well as the planning and the development of a great number of activities. Although no optional activities may be offered in this context. It has been detected that the favoured activities differ according to the target group and that social capital results mainly from overall target group contacts. An answer to the question that has been posed above might be therefore: the Alumni activity can be created efficiently by identification, application, and amelioration within the Alumni organization.