<p><span>Myth and legend are often treated as cultural byproducts or branding garnish. This paper argues instead that they function as an organizational technology: a high-leverage mechanism for legitimacy production and coordination under conditions of rapid scaling, institutional weakness, and informational overload. Building on bounded attention and mediated visibility, I propose a cross-era mechanism-chain model in which structural pressures are translated—via narrative apparatuses (e.g., rituals and coinage, state bulletins and commemorative media, platform algorithms and virality)—into psychosocial mechanisms of meaning compression, commitment lock-in, attention aggregation, and identity adhesion. These mechanisms generate organizational outcomes such as cohesion, discipline, resource inflow, and bargaining power, while also producing predictable backfire loops (failure amplification, bad-news suppression, strategic overconfidence, and succession fragility). Using a comparative, process-tracing design across Alexander, Napoleon, and Elon Musk, the paper specifies boundary conditions and eight falsifiable propositions, including the “Newton puzzle”: when authority must travel faster than verifiable evidence, narrative governance becomes a rational substitute for slow validation. The analysis highlights a platform-era shift from stability-oriented myth infrastructures to leverage-oriented algorithmic charisma, shortening the narrative half-life and increasing reputational volatility. The framework offers testable predictions for organizational communication and platform governance research, and clarifies when mythic leadership enhances coordination versus when it delays institutionalization and destabilizes succession.</span></p> <div> </div>