A riddle wrapped in an enigma; management prerogative v lawful instruction

In previous posts, I have identified the doctrine of managerial or management prerogative, hopefully in a contemporary context, which seeks to assert the right of management to manage. The concept is generally accepted by historians and lawyers as having emerged as a way of recognizing property rights, that is to say to acknowledge that it was the right of property owners, those contributing industrial capital to a venture, to control those contributing mere labour to the enterprise. As offensive as that now appears, it was orthodox thinking in the industrial revolution and has only been slowly eroded during the 20th century.
But what is the difference between management prerogative and the right of management to issue lawful and reasonable instructions; or are they in reality the same thing?
At common law, employees have an implied duty of obedience and cooperation rooted in their contract of employment. Employees therefore have a duty to obey an employer’s directions, so long as they are lawful and reasonable.
A ‘lawful’ direction is generally easily ascertained and will be dependent upon whether the direction of the employer requires the employee to contravene a State, Territory or Commonwealth law.
However, the reasonableness of an employer’s direction will depend upon the circumstances of each individual case. When taking into consideration whether a direction is reasonable, what is considered is the nature of the work which the employee undertakes, the terms (express and implied) of the contract of employment, customary practices and the usual course of dealing between the parties.
Accordingly the obligation upon an employee to comply with a lawful and reasonable instruction (or command as it used to be termed) arises from the application of principles of contract law. In contrast, at least in Australia, the doctrine of management prerogative emerged as a tool by the High Court of Australia to define what constitutes an “industrial matter”. It needed to do so because the Australian Constitution limits the Commonwealth’s legislative powers to making laws for the conciliation and arbitration of industrial matters, which required the High Court in various bitter constitutional law cases after federation to define what the industrial tribunals could and could not review. For example in Clancy v Butchers’ Shop Employees’ Union (1904) 1 CLR 181 a conservative High Court ruled that the closing times of retail shops was not an industrial matter which could be the subject of compulsory arbitration because it was management prerogative.
Accordingly whilst the right of an employer to issue lawful and reasonable instructions in Australia looks very similar in its implications and consequences to management prerogative, they are in fact quite separate rights with fundamentally different jurisprudential origins.
Quite paradoxically, the Fair Work Regulations 2009 includes an employee’s failure to comply with a lawful and reasonable instruction which is consistent with the employee’s contract of employment as constituting serious misconduct.